More than 100 extremely endangered black-footed ferrets have been released into the wild since 2022 at the Southern Plains Land Trust ranch south of Lamar, but biologists’ most recent fall survey found zero evidence that any had survived. 

The apparently abysmal release-survival rate for North America’s most endangered mammal regularly undercuts the dedicated work of dozens of biologists and wildlife officers in Colorado. The state’s southern ranches and federal lands have been the center of black-footed ferret reintroduction using carefully bred kits and cloned animals raised at a federal research center near Fort Collins.

Now, a release of 20 more ferrets at the trust’s Heartland Ranch on Tuesday will be followed Wednesday by a major technological escalation of protection efforts.

Each ferret was fitted with a radio-frequency collar before leaving the Wellington breeding site for Lamar. On Wednesday, researchers from Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the national Smithsonian science center will fly drones for the first time to track the ferrets’ VHF collars, while also looking out for predators or other threats that wipe them out as quickly as they are released. 

“This project aims to enhance our understanding of the relationship between black-footed ferrets and their predators,” said Jonathan Reitz, a CPW wildlife biologist who has worked on multiple releases and tracking efforts in southeastern Colorado. “Specifically, we are investigating which species prey on any black-footed ferrets in the two weeks following the ferret release.”

Read more from Michael Booth at ColoradoSun.com.

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