Without prairie dogs, endangered black-footed ferrets disappear

The black-footed ferret is among the planet’s most endangered species. A native of central North America, it was considered extinct until September 26, 1981, when a Meeteetse, Wyoming investigator named Shep rediscovered it. Shep was a ranch dog who delivered a carcass to his owners’ front steps.

Black-footed ferrets need prairie dog towns as habitat. They prey on the rodents there and use their tunnels for refuge.

Prairie dogs are Great Plains ground squirrels that sound and act a lot like dogs. They bark, sit erect, wag their tails, wrestle like puppies and exchange kiss-like greetings.

They are also maligned. Ranchers claim they compete with cattle for grass. They don’t. Cattle, bison, deer, elk and pronghorns gravitate to prairie dog towns because prairie dogs bring rich, moist soil to the surface, aerate and fertilize soil, and improve water retention — all of which encourages lush, nutritious vegetation. Prairie dog towns support at least 150 species.

It’s still a crime to intentionally kill or harm individual black-footed ferrets or other creatures protected by the Endangered Species Act. But on September 14, the Trump administration decreed that it’s perfectly okay to destroy the habitat these animals require for survival. It’s “common sense,” proclaims Trump’s Interior Secretary Douglas Burgum.

We’ve already wiped out 98 percent of prairie dog towns. But now, developers can legally build shopping malls on top of prairie dog towns occupied by black-footed ferrets. These same prairie dog towns can also legally be eliminated by poison applied by ranchers and county, state and federal agencies.

“This rule guts the standard that has safeguarded imperiled wildlife (for 50 years),” says Defenders of Wildlife. Another nonprofit, Animal Wellness Action, likens Trump’s weakening of the Endangered Species Act to “stripping anti-discrimination provisions from the Civil Rights Act.” The Environmental Protection Information Center warns that the change “removes a key legal shield that keeps forests, rivers, and wild lands intact.”

Since Shep’s rediscovery, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and partners have undertaken an expensive and complicated black-footed ferret recovery program. They have protected and restored prairie dog habitat throughout the West, immunized prairie dogs against rampant sylvatic plague, bred ferrets in captivity and released them in prairie dog towns in Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and, most recently, Arizona.

Black-footed ferret recovery is hailed as one of the most spectacular success stories of the Endangered Species Act. But it may be for naught, even if the Trump rule is vacated by challenges in the courts.

That’s because America remains at war with prairie dogs. County commissions, the U.S. Forest Service and USDA’s Wildlife Services poison them. “Varminters” shoot them for recreation, leaving them to rot, but not before raptors and other scavengers consume them along with bullet fragments, then die of lead poisoning.

This October, the Prairie Dog Coalition circulated a petition to ban prairie dog shooting in Colorado, where 500 black-footed ferrets have been released since 2001. The U.S. Forest Service permits and promotes prairie dog shooting on national grasslands. Game and fish agencies permit and promote it on state lands. The Sioux Nation permits and promotes it on reservations.

Because so many raptors were dying of lead poisoning, Audubon of Kansas has offered nontoxic copper bullets to prairie dog shooters at the same cost as cheaper lead rounds. According to game managers and even the National Rifle Association, copper kills more efficiently than lead. But varminters resist copper because they’ve always used lead. After four years, Kansas Audubon didn’t have one taker.

I accompanied famed prairie dog shooter Rich Grable to the Rosebud Sioux reservation in South Dakota. “Mr. Dog,” as he’s known, eschews the standard tripod, preferring to rest his Remington .222 rifle on foam rubber at the base of his truck window.

Crack. Mr. Dog cut a target in half, sending hindquarters spinning. “Dead,” he declared, punching his dashboard-mounted kill counter. Babies, with paws on siblings’ shoulders, exploded in red mist. Once he killed five with a single shot.

“Can ya hear it go plop?” he cackled. “Dissolved him! Ha. Ha.” Whenever a target dragged itself back into its burrow, minus body parts, Mr. Dog shouted: “I done something to him.” One year he killed 7,652 prairie dogs.

Mr. Dog appreciates most wildlife. Yet he’s part of a ranching and federal and state management culture that perceives prairie dogs as divine typos in need of “Wite-Out liquid.”

Unfortunately, that blots out whole ecosystems, and it has a good chance of blotting out black-footed ferrets — even if the Trump rule is overturned.

Ted Williams, a longtime environmental writer, is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West.

Black-tailed prairie dogs engaged in a common greeting mistaken as a kiss, credit NPS