Endangered
Black-footed ferret
Mustela nigripes
As of 2015, over 200 mature individuals are in the wild across 18 populations, with four self-sustaining populations in South Dakota, Arizona, and Wyoming.
Appearance
The black-footed ferret has a long, slender body with black outlines on its paws, ears, parts of its face and its tail.
It differs from the European polecat by the greater contrast between its dark limbs and pale body and the shorter length of its black tail-tip.
Range and habitat
The historical range of the black-footed ferret was closely correlated with, but not restricted to, the range of prairie dogs (Cynomys spp.). Its range extended from southern Alberta and southern Saskatchewan south to Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Since 1990, black-footed ferrets have been reintroduced to the following sites: Shirley Basin, Wyoming. UL Bend National Wildlife Refuge and Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, Montana; conata Basin/Badlands, Buffalo Gap National Grassland, Wind Cave National Park and the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota; aubrey Valley, Arizona; rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge and Wolf Creek in Colorado; coyote Basin, straddling Colorado and Utah, northern Chihuahua, Mexico, and Grasslands National Park, Canada.
The black-footed ferret experienced a recent population bottleneck in the wild followed by a more than 30-year recovery through ex situ breeding and then reintroduction into its native range. Reintroduction sites have experienced multiple years of reproduction from released individuals.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The black-footed ferret is solitary, except when breeding or raising litters. It is nocturnal and primarily hunts for sleeping prairie dogs in their burrows.
It is largely nocturnal and solitary, except when breeding or raising litters. Up to 90% of its diet is composed of prairie dogs. A captive-breeding program launched by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service resulted in its reintroduction into eight western US states, Canada, and Mexico from 1991 to 2009.
In crisis
As of 2015, over 200 mature individuals are in the wild across 18 populations, with four self-sustaining populations in South Dakota, Arizona, and Wyoming. This cohort eventually grew to 130 individuals and was then nearly extirpated by sylvatic plague, Yersinia pestis, and canine distemper virus, Canine morbillivirus, with eventually 18 animals remaining. Seven of those 18 animals produced offspring that survived and reproduced, and with currently living descendants, are the ancestors of all black-footed ferrets now in the ex situ (about 320) and in situ (about 300) populations.
In September 2006, South Dakota's ferret population was estimated to be around 420, with 250 (100 breeding adults consisting of 67 females and 33 males) in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, that is 100,000 acres (40,000 ha), less than 3% of the public grasslands in South Dakota, 70 miles (110 km) east of Rapid City, South Dakota, in the Buffalo Gap National Grassland bordering Badlands National Park, 130 ferrets northeast of Eagle Butte, South Dakota, on Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, and about 40 ferrets on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. Arizona's Aubrey Valley ferret population was well over 100 and a second reintroduction site with around 50 animals is used.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Black-footed ferret is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Black-footed ferret, Wikidata item Q402885. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
