Page 8 - De-Extinction: The Science of Bringing Lost Species Back to Life

92 DEEXTINCTION

THE BLACKFOOTED FERRET

The black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes) is an endangered species with
low genetic diversity. Black-footed ferrets were once an essential part of the
US prairie ecosystem, both as predators and prey. The ferrets mostly ate
prairie dogs. In turn, larger predators, such as owls, badgers, and coyotes,
ate ferrets.
In the twentieth century, US farmers and ranchers poisoned huge
numbers of prairie dogs. Landowners viewed the prairie dogs as pests
because they burrowed holes in farmland and ranchland and ate native
vegetation. But without prairie dogs to eat, the black-footed ferret nearly
went extinct.
Scientists thought the black-footed ferret was gone forever, but in 1981,
they discovered a small population alive in Wyoming. At first, biologists
took a hands-off approach, merely guarding and monitoring the colony. But
the surviving ferrets, having gone through a severe bottleneck when their
population declined, had very low genetic diversity. This made the colony
highly susceptible to disease. When disease broke out in the colony in 1985,
22 percent of the remaining ferrets died.
In 1985 biologists launched a captive breeding program to save the
species. They captured the
last eighteen survivors and
bred them using artificial
insemination. In 1991 scientists
began releasing the captive-
born ferrets back into the wild,
many of them in the western
United States and Mexico.
In the twenty-first century,
black-footed ferrets now number
in the hundreds. But their low
genetic diversity still makes
In the late 1980s, scientists in the them susceptible to disease.
western United States saved black- De-extinction technology
footed ferrets from extinction using a could help by restoring genetic
captive breeding program. diversity to the population.