Black-footed ferrets (Mustela nigripes). Photo © Kimberly Fraser/USFWS

The first half of this article is a bit gruesome, due to the particulars of how this species arrived at the brink of extinction. The second half is the “bright horizon” side of the story, and thanks to The Nature Conservancy for sharing it (among all their other good works):

…Until 2013 willing landowners were hard to find. But that year the Fish and Wildlife Service implemented a “Safe Harbor” program by which the agency promises not to prosecute participants for accidental take of ferrets if they agree to protect prairie dogs and allow ferret monitoring and plague management. What’s more, in some states the Natural Resources Conservation Service pays them for hosting ferrets. Without Safe Harbor the Endangered Species Act tends not to work on private land; and without private land ferret recovery can’t happen.

In Colorado Safe Harbor already has allowed ferret releases on five private sites, the first on the Walker ranch near Pueblo. Fourteen years ago Gary Walker’s horse stepped in a prairie dog hole and landed on him, crushing his rib cage and breaking his back, arm and collar bone.

“I have plenty of reason to hate prairie dogs,” says Walker. “I don’t. They can be a terrible nuisance; but I don’t believe in poisoning, and there aren’t enough bullets in the world to eliminate them. In 1995 we had about 3,000 acres of prairie dogs. By the time I got ferrets [in 2013] we had almost 10,000 acres. I prefer to let natural predation contain my prairie dogs. That’s why we wanted ferrets.”

Helping ferrets with prairie dog containment on the Walker ranch is a profusion of swift foxes, badgers, coyotes, bobcats, hawks, owls and golden eagles — all vulnerable to secondary mortality by the popular prairie dog poison Rozol.

I spoke with Walker in early November, hours after he’d met with The Nature Conservancy in order to grant it a 6,360-acre conservation easement. That will push TNC easements on his ranch to about 30,000 acres and go a long way to securing a future for black-footed ferrets. “TNC fights the good fight,” Walker told me. “We’re always here to help them; and I hope they’ll always be here to help us.”

Under the Fish and Wildlife Service’s new recovery plan ferrets will be taken off the Endangered Species list if, among other criteria, a captive breeding population is maintained at a minimum of 105 males and 175 females at three or more facilities and at least 3,000 breeding adults are extant in 30 or more wild populations in at least 9 of the 12 states within the original range.

Gober feels lots better about the future of black-footed ferrets now than when I last interviewed him, almost a decade ago. “We know our objectives,” he says. “We know the tools we need. Whether or not we’ll get the resources for that level of management is the question.”

Recovery will require about 500,000 acres of healthy prairie dogs. Given the current level of interest and commitment, Safe Harbor and the new plague vaccine, that’s an eminently attainable goal. It’s also a modest one, considering that 500,000 acres is about a tenth of one percent of historical habitat.

Read the whole story here.