Check this out!

Get 'em, armed Park Rangers!

This has not been vetted academically, but for sheer coolness I thought I would bring this up. Sometimes you have to take charge for your actions or for those of others.  We have the last remaining white rhino because poachers have all but extirpated these magnificent creatures, so armed guards are here to make a stand.    Anyhoo here's the link to the article on Powerful Primates website about this magnificent beast and its imperiled future because superstitious people think its keratinaceous horn is magical...still!  Unbelievable.

You also know what's unbelievable? The story of the black-footed ferret. The pluckiness of the black-footed ferret is due a conglomeration of zoos, individuals, philanthropic organizations, and our federal government's Department of the Interior (i.e. the US Fish & Wildlife). The story begins of a farmer and his wife receiving a dead, black-footed ferret (BFF) as a gift from his dog in Meeteetse, Wyoming in 1981.  I'm paraphrasing the Black-Footed Ferret's Recovery Program's website, click here to read it yourself. This led to a captive breeding program because BFFs are considered one of the most rare mammals in North America (including yours truly)! Sadly, these guys are vulnerable to canine distemper, sylvatic plague and a whole host of other diseases that eventually killed the Meeteetse captive bred program.  Fast forward to the 90s and whole host of conservation minded organizations get on board to try to save these guys. Reintroduction efforts in the Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions are firstly miss, now they are hits with the Black-Footed Recovery Program stating there are more BFFs in the wild than in captive breeding program.

Reintroduction of the BFFs are dependent on prairie dog colonies.  The tale of the juxtaposition of urban dwellers and prairie dog colonies usually ends in prairie dog habitats becoming fragmented and unmanageable numbers of prairie dogs (due to a lack of predators as pioneers) blighting the area  before being poisoned due to human perceptions of them as pests.

Relocate the prairie dogs away from the urban environment with acres of prairie grasslands and reintroduce the BFFs at the colonies and let nature do her work.  The dynamic interaction and energy flow within prairie dogs and the BFFs aids in the health of the ecosystem and keeps the prairie dog population manageable. In a perfect world this should go on without human intervention; but alas, we put them into this position so conservation managers should facilitate monitoring of ecosystem health via BFF and prairie dog populations.  It's the Goldilocks Effect: not too much, not too little but just right.

Click on the Black Footed Ferret Recovery Program's link to educate yourself even more!