NPR’s “Science Friday” program presented a good segment on the battle to keep the black-footed ferret from going extinct. When it was rediscovered a couple decades ago there were fewer than twenty known to be alive…after most experts thought it had gone extinct. Now its major enemy is an invasive disease brought to the new world through human action…plague which apparently came ashore in San Francisco, on the backs of snip rats. From there it spread eastward to the Great Plains where these ferrets and their prey, prairie dogs, live.
In my forthcoming book on San Francisco’s natural history over the past 300 years invasive species from West Nile virus to feral pigs get full discussion.
Posted by: atowhee | September 10, 2017
THE BLACK-FOOTED FERRET AND ITS ALLIES
Posted in california, carnivore, conservation, global warming, mammals, natural history, research, san francisco | Tags: black-footed ferret, invasive species, plague, prairie dog, West Nile virus
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