Black Footed Ferret Essay

What is a black-footed ferret, what do they look like, and why they are endangered.

A black-footed ferret is a critically endangered species which belongs to the weasel family (Mustelids), it is a carnivore which means that it only eats meat, black-footed ferrets are also a secondary consumer which means that it is in the third part of a life cycle.

A black-footed ferret has a slim and long body covered with yellowish brown fur, with blackish fur on the back. It also has black feet, long claws and a black tipped tail

The main threat of these black-footed ferrets is lost of prey, hunters are eradicating the populations of the prairie dogs due to eating too much grass in prairie dog towns. Other threats consist of habitat loss and epidemic or exotic diseases, since black-footed ferrets live underground, spend most of their time at home, and are nocturnal (meaning they are more active on surface at night), they don’t realize anything happening in the outside world in the day, that means flooding in grasslands and plowing grasslands to make new modern town or cities could result in serious damage to black-footed ferrets habitat.

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What happened to the black-footed ferrets in the

previous years and where they live.

According to Nature Canada, in these previous years we had, the black-footed ferret has been through harsh decreases, they originated from the northern prairies of Chihuahua, Mexico to southern Canada in the prairies of Saskatchewan, they settled there for a long time, until they stopped appearing, making it that spotting a black-footed ferret was a very rare sighting.

By 1981, people around America started thinking that the black-footed ferrets were extinct worldwide, but in that same very year, it was reported that the black-footed ferret was spotted, turns out there was a total colony of 129 black-footed ferrets. Unfortunately, the sylvatic plague was affecting these ferrets, drastically lowering the population of these ferrets to only 18 black-footed ferrets

left.
The remaining 18 was found and was held captive to reproduce, 7 out of 18 of these ferrets successfully reproduced, and that the black-footed ferrets are making a comeback.

As I had mentioned before, black-footed ferrets historically ranged from Chihuahua, Mexico to Saskatchewan, Canada (and also living in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, Kansas, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Sonora,Mexico). Currently today they are living in the wild in North America, or living in research facility in Saskatchewan, Chihuahua, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico.
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What’s the total population and what is their prey and predators

Black-footed ferrets are making a comeback, but not as fast, reproduction efforts are still being done but currently, the black-footed ferret’s population today has around 300 living in North America, and it is possible that there are even more black-footed ferrets scattered around America or even farther that are not discovered yet.

Black-footed ferrets plays an important role in the ecosystem in prairies, one reason why is because black-footed ferrets are prey to a lot of animals, for example: ferruginous hawk, coyotes, and golden eagles, Other predators of the black-footed ferret are prairie rattlesnakes, bobcats, american badgers, prairie falcons, and the horned owl. On the other end of the spectrum is prey, and that black-footed ferrets targets one main animal, the prairie dog, did you know that the diet of a black-footed ferrets consist of 90% of prairie dogs? The other 10% consist of ground squirrels, rabbits, small rodents, and birds.

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What do other people do to save the black-footed ferret

For National Geographic, they are holding black-footed ferrets in captivity and letting them breed every year each spring, likely to have a litter of 4 kits (which are black-footed ferret babies), after, they could grow into the size of their mother due to rapid growth.When they have grown, they are sent outside to penthouses to experience living outdoors and learn how to hunt, get used to burrows, how to defend and many other wildlife skills.
When they succeed on all of these skills required to survive, then they are released into the wild, where they spend their lives in.
Before a ferret is actually released back into the wild, they are vaccinated for distemper, rabies, and plague, they do this because the reason for the population of the black-footed ferrets to drop significantly is due to sylvatic plague and canine distemper, they are sensitive to canine distemper that if they got released unvaccinated, then they would possibly die off before reproducing again.
Where they bring these vaccinated and skilled black-footed ferrets are at a grassland in Collins which owns two giant parcels of 4000 prairie dogs or at other grasslands in North America, so they can bring back black-footed ferrets to this type of biome. Luckily landowners that own this lands lends the land for black-footed ferret programs because they understand the ecosystem is dying and is missing carnivores, and that they are dropping black-footed ferrets to solve that problem.
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