So, in honor of the wilderness we felt grateful to witness, I thought I'd put up a recent discovery that should surely give everybody warm fuzzies:
September 2009
After 75 years without a sighting, a wild-born black footed ferret has been found in New Mexico! The ferret was discovered in north-central New Mexico on the Vermejo Park Ranch. The ferret is the offspring of ferrets from a captive bred reintroduction program that had been made possible through Recovery Program funds provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and our many partners, including substantial help from the Turner Endangered Species Fund. The sighting of the young male black footed ferret was confirmed on September 16, during a spotlight survey at the ranch.
5 comments:
Gee, when I saw your headline I was hoping you'd seen the ferret. But was happy to get the news that this was in NM. (and glad you had a nice hike.)
Periodically, folks report this species in the Central NM Bosque, but no such luck. We have a masked sub-species of the Long-Tailed Weasel that looks almost exactly like the ferret, but is smaller and without the black feet.
Thanks for the post.
Handome little critters. Glad they are being reintroduced.
www.wildlifearoundus.blogspot.com
It's great that people are rediscovering species we thought were gone. Nature is very resilient.
Wonderful news about the Black footed ferrets. They are cute critters. It sounds like you had a wonderful hike and ouitng.
Nope, Bill...I've not been lucky enough to see a ferret, but I have seen a weasel or two run across the roads here. I just love that such beautiful little critters are part of our wildlife; for some reason they seem exotic to me. The ones I saw were pure white with a black-tipped tail...the smaller is actually an ermine.
Thanks Carol, I was tickled too, to find the article.
SGuy, apparently they weren't exactly rediscovering the species as much as releasing captive-bred animals. The finding was that the re-introduced pairs are breeding. Still, I think it's way cool. Now, if we can just keep the poison's and bullets down to a minimum, huh?
Thank you all for stopping by!
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