Page 28 - ARUBA TODAY

A28 SCIENCE
Monday 20 March 2017

To aid ferrets, vaccine treats planned for prairie dogs

MEAD GRUVER has taken a toll on prairie
Associated Press dogs — and by extension
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — the black-footed ferret,
Feeding peanut butter which lives in the rodents’
kibbles to millions of prai- burrows. The ferrets were
rie dogs — by flinging the believed extinct until a
treats from four-wheelers ranch dog brought home
and dropping them from a dead one near Meetee-
drones — could be the tse, Wyoming, in 1981.
next big thing to help a Beginning in the 1990s, ef-
spunky little weasel that al- forts to breed black-footed
most went extinct. ferrets at a facility near Fort
Slinky with a robber-like Collins, Colorado, and re-
black mask across its eyes, lease them into the wild
the endangered black- have been successful in
footed ferret is a fierce the sense that the black-
predator. The up to 2-foot- footed ferret is no longer
long weasel feeds almost teetering on the brink.
exclusively on prairie dogs, Black-footed ferrets re-
rodents that live in vast col- cently have been in-
onies regularly decimated troduced at the Rocky
by plague outbreaks. Mountain Arsenal National
The disease keeps threat- Wildlife Refuge near Den-
ening the food supply of In this Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015, file photo, Federal Communication Commission Commissioner Ajit ver and to the Meeteetse
ferrets bred in captivity Pai speaks during an open hearing and vote on “Net Neutrality” in Washington. Associated Press ranch where scientists col-
and reintroduced on the lected the last known wild
landscape. Biologists are colonies in several states Survey’s National Wildlife life Service on the project. ferrets to start the captive-
increasingly optimistic that in the West. “We’re not at- Health Center in Madison, At a rate of 40 to 50 pel- breeding program. De-
feeding plague vaccine to tempting to eradicate it. Wisconsin. They plan to lets per acre, Emmerich scendants of those ferrets
prairie dogs can improve That would be very, very treat prairie dog colonies figures they will need 1 mil- have been reintroduced
the ferrets’ success rate. difficult at this point. We’re with blueberry-sized vac- lion or more pellets for the at 28 sites and eight states,
Starting this fall, they hope just trying to manage it cine pellets made with job. A U.S. Department of Canada and Mexico.
to ramp up recent plague on selected colonies,” peanut butter, using a Agriculture supply depot in But plague, which is spread
vaccination experiments said Tonie Rocke, who re- specially made “glorified Pocatello, Idaho, that also by fleas, remains a threat
to cover as much as 40 searches animal diseases gumball machine” to fling makes rodent poison for to the prairie dog colonies
square miles of prairie dog with the U.S. Geological the pellets from all-terrain farmers will manufacture where ferrets live, said Fish
vehicles. They might also the pellets. Plague, which and Wildlife spokesman
WE BRING OUR LIVE GIRL ON GIRL SHOW TO YOU drop pellets from drones to killed millions of people in Ryan Moehring.
avoid trampling the coun- medieval Europe, wasn’t Biologists often treat the
tryside. “Prairie dogs love it. a problem for prairie dogs colonies with insecticide to
They gobble it up as fast as until it arrived in the U.S. combat fleas. Plague vac-
they can,” said John Em- over a century ago. The cine likewise would need
merich, a retired Wyoming disease now routinely cy- to be applied regularly
Game and Fish Depart- cles through prairie dog — once a year, because
ment deputy director who colonies across the ferrets’ prairie dogs typically don’t
chairs Black-Footed Ferret 12-state historical range. live more than a few years,
Friends, a group working Habitat loss to farming and and new ones are born ev-
with the U.S. Fish and Wild- poisoning by ranchers also ery year. q