How soon we forget

Remember all the furor over the black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes) back in the 1980s? The mammals were so rare they were thought to be extinct until 1981, when a farm dog found one and took it home. In 1986 the total census of black-footed ferrets was 14 in the state of Wyoming, the country, and the world. Thanks to the hard work of the dedicated biologists at Sybille Wildlife Research Center in Meteetse, Wyoming, the University of Wyoming, and the Wyoming and Colorado Game and Fish Departments, the population has rebounded. There are over 700 ferrets in the wild, and some 400 in captivity. As of the end of June this year, 317 kits had been born. The black-footed ferret is North America's only endemic ferret, and is well-adapted to prairie life. So how did it face near-extinction?
The answer, as one might expect, is human disturbance. When the white man arrived on the scene he began plowing vast tracts of prairie for farming, resulting in habitat loss. He also brought with him the sylvatic and bubonic plague. While the ferret is not susceptible to these diseases, the black-tailed prairie dog is (in fact, a few students who work with prairie dogs at Colorado State University have been infected with and survived the plague). This caused a huge decline in prey, thus a decline in the ferret population. The plague, however, had the most devastating effect, and the sylvatic plague hampered restoration efforts in the mid-80s.
Another major problem for the ferrets was the poisoning of praie dogs. Prairie dogs are considered a nuisance by farmers and ranchers. The dogs dig holes, eat grain, and if a horse or cow is really unlucky it might step in one of those holes and break a leg. Poisoning would be a great control tool if it could be done in a closed system, but the system isn't closed. If you've read Silent Spring, you know that cumulative effects of DDT in prey led to the decline in the osprey population, and it works the same way with ferrets. The prairie dog eats the poison, then the ferret eats the prairie dog, and after a few prairie dogs the ferret either dies from the poison itself or (like the osprey) ends up with a severely compromised reproductive system.
Skip to present day. Guess what? The Department of Agriculture is moving to usepoisoning as a tool in prairie dog control yet again. The specific poison they are advocating is called Rozol. I'll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say the effects aren't pleasant. Right now Defenders of Wildlife is running a campaign on how inhumane it is. (Defenders is a good organization, but I'd really like to see it use more science and less emotion to persuade government agencies of its positions.) This poison will kill anything that ingests it--prairie dogs, black-footed ferrets, cats, dogs, birds, even people. Young as I was, I seem to remember a lot of people being upset when the poison killed their dogs the last time around, and I doubt things will be much differrent this time. I'm sure all the wildlife biologists who worked so hard to bring the ferret back from the brink will be immensely pleased to see their hard work destroyed. Someone once said that those who do not remember the past will be doomed to repeat it. Well, guess what...