Ferret litter a victory in bid to return the weasels to Canada

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This article was published 09/08/2010 (5631 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WILDLIFE officials running a North America-wide project to bring the black-footed ferret back from the brink of extinction are celebrating two major milestones: the first wild-born litter of kits in Canada in more than 70 years and the most successful captive breeding season ever at one of the American zoos that supplies many of the baby weasels needed to sustain recovery efforts at sites in Saskatchewan, eight U.S. states and Mexico.

The critically endangered species — thought to have gone extinct in the 1950s until a farm dog caught and killed one of the black-masked ferrets in Wyoming in 1981 — had disappeared from its Canadian range in southern Saskatchewan and Alberta in the late 1930s.

But a high-profile bid by Parks Canada to reintroduce the slinky weasel to Saskatchewan’s Grasslands National Park has yielded its first litter of newborns — a "significant benchmark" in the three-nation recovery effort, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said last week in a statement hailing the achievement.

Meanwhile, the Smithsonian National Zoo in Virginia — a major hub in the North American network of captive breeding sites that sustain the fragile populations of ferrets in their new colonies — announced a "banner year" for healthy births, with 12 new litters totalling 49 black-footed ferret kits.

Those animals will eventually be moved to a facility in Colorado that readies them to be returned to the wild at one of the 19 reintroduction sites in the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

 

— Postmedia News