Meet the black-footed ferret & the people fighting for the species

On today's show...

The black-footed ferret is the most endangered mammal in North America. Its numbers dwindled so low that it was declared extinct in 1979.

Then, a single wild colony was found in Wyoming. The colony was taken into captivity for a breeding program.

Descendants of those 18 individuals now populate the Conata Basin in the Badlands National Park. The basin has fewer than 300 individuals, which means South Dakota has over half of the world's 400-500 wild black-footed ferrets.

SDPB joins the field biologists who take care of the Conata Basin population. We talk to Steve Forrest, who worked with the original Wyoming population, and Travis Livieri, executive director of Prairie Wildlife Research.

Livieri takes listeners into his work and into his pickup truck while he "spotlights" for black-footed ferrets in the basin's prairie. We get up close and personal with the ferret and the ups and downs of its history.

1 of 8  — ferret zoom.jpeg

2 of 8  — ferret trap in burrow.jpeg

3 of 8  — buff ferret.jpeg

4 of 8  — ferret poses.jpeg

5 of 8  — Travis Livieri.jpeg

6 of 8  — Conata Basin sign.jpeg

7 of 8  — checking for microchip.jpeg

8 of 8  — Ferret Anatomy.jpeg