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SALT LAKE CITY — Most people don't know much about ferrets. Maybe they know that ferrets do weird dances. Or that Jennifer Aniston's character kept one as a pet in that movie no one remembers the name of. Or that they're illegal in California, so you better not try to hide one in the trunk along with those oranges you're trying to sneak in. Beyond that, though, the creatures are a mystery.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to change that, though, with a program starting this week called "Follow the ferret." Participants won't actually be scrambling after the light-footed little guys — that would get messy — but they will have the chance to see for themselves what being a ferret is all about.
Through the National Black-Footed Ferret Recovery Program, participants are being given the opportunity to follow the life cycle of the black-footed ferret, an animal so endangered it's been declared extinct twice.
A few ferrets were discovered in 1981 and taken to a captive breeding facility, where their numbers grew from 18 to more than 7,100 over the course of three decades. About 3,000 were reintroduced into the wild, and 1,000 are alive now.
The journey of the ferrets can be followed on the program's Facebook page. They were born today; the squiggly little things you see in the picture provided by the USFWS will grow up to look like actual animals one day.
The nocturnal hunters had a historic range throughout the Midwest and Rocky Mountain regions, stretching from Canada to Mexico. They were twice believed to be extinct — once in the 1950s and again in 1979 — and remain on the Endangered Species list.
Biologists with the USFWS work year-round to prepare the ferrets to survive on the prairies, and they say it is rewarding work.
"We know that if the American public learns more about this species, they'll be much more likely to support its recovery and, just as importantly, the conservation of many other prairie species who share this rare habitat," Kimberly Tamkun said in prepared remarks. Tamkun works with the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center.
Utah has seen multiple releases of the black-footed ferret since the state joined a nationwide conservation effort in 1999, the most recent of which being the Nov. 2011 release of 37 of the animals into Uintah County. The Beehive State will likely never see ferrets in large numbers, though, because ferrets like to eat prarie dogs, and we can't give them what they want.
"We don't have a lot of (ferret) numbers, and we never will," Brian Maxfield, with the Division of Wildlife Resources, said at the 2011 release. "This is just not a huge prairie dog colony with a dense population like you would find in South Dakota, so we're doing very well with regard to what we have."
