a team from the World Wildlife Fund
works the night shift to ensure a future
for one of the rarest mammals in North
America at the end of this bumpy ride
across the Dakota Plains is a colony of
mammals still struggling back from the
brink of extinction
and our job tonight is to catch ferrets
from previous years and also pick up a
few juveniles of young of this year we
haven’t been marked yet c-break jean i
shine by the light of the moon and
headlamps the team captures the small
animals close to a dozen each night for
a ferret physical we just set them in
the hole so it’s triggered by we try to
make this a natural extension of the
Burrow system impossible and then it’s
triggered by when the fair comes up and
steps on this treadle because they’re
very curious animals and they won’t be
able to abide staying down there very
long without coming up to see what’s
going on because it’s a juvenile huh any
of that you know this is a young one
probably a young female just bite-sized
are you doing okay buddy go ahead
the black tubes two clicks her into the
darkness of the tube and if she were
transponder diff she had a chip in her
you can’t read it in the metal trap so
you have to transfer them anyway yeah
Travis I ended up with female KITT okay
gas is on inside the trailer the team
puts technology and pharmaceuticals to
work we’re gonna put a microchip in do
the vaccine we’ll get a little hair
sample so they can do DNA tracking on it
we’ll get a swab of the inside of the
cheek so they can do DNA on it too he’s
gonna do semper vaccine it does know a
plague vaccine this is like liquid gold
almost this is an experimental vaccine
that as we’ve gotten ahold of in the
ferret program we know that in lab
trials it works very well on black food
ferrets and this is good old Clara all
nice and easy natural black number 122
we can put a little bit of black dye on
his neck and then you know it’s nobody
we already trapped up we don’t have to
deal with them okay his head’s here here
we go we we put them back in the same
burrow from where we trap them
especially the kits especially the young
of the year because they’re still
potentially tied to their to their
mother
you got you got lucky they usually go
right down the hole that’s cool
there’s no textbook on how to captive
breed and reintroduce black-footed
ferrets so a lot of this was learned by
trial and error during 85 and 87 they
were able to trap the last 18 black for
difference that existed Meeteetse
Wyoming those animals went to a captive
breeding center in Wyoming and that’s
when the captive breeding effort started
big deal just take a look at it here
we’ve got a little boy all the blood
sweat and tears that myselfin a lot of
other individuals have from this program
are really paying off
we have wild black food ferrets
reproducing on the ground a fully
fledged self-sustaining population here
in South Dakota it’s us from the most
satisfying feelings I’ve had my career
so far
the team has worked the night shift on
this Prairie for five years to ensure
these black footed creatures their
historic
America’s plane
works the night shift to ensure a future
for one of the rarest mammals in North
America at the end of this bumpy ride
across the Dakota Plains is a colony of
mammals still struggling back from the
brink of extinction
and our job tonight is to catch ferrets
from previous years and also pick up a
few juveniles of young of this year we
haven’t been marked yet c-break jean i
shine by the light of the moon and
headlamps the team captures the small
animals close to a dozen each night for
a ferret physical we just set them in
the hole so it’s triggered by we try to
make this a natural extension of the
Burrow system impossible and then it’s
triggered by when the fair comes up and
steps on this treadle because they’re
very curious animals and they won’t be
able to abide staying down there very
long without coming up to see what’s
going on because it’s a juvenile huh any
of that you know this is a young one
probably a young female just bite-sized
are you doing okay buddy go ahead
the black tubes two clicks her into the
darkness of the tube and if she were
transponder diff she had a chip in her
you can’t read it in the metal trap so
you have to transfer them anyway yeah
Travis I ended up with female KITT okay
gas is on inside the trailer the team
puts technology and pharmaceuticals to
work we’re gonna put a microchip in do
the vaccine we’ll get a little hair
sample so they can do DNA tracking on it
we’ll get a swab of the inside of the
cheek so they can do DNA on it too he’s
gonna do semper vaccine it does know a
plague vaccine this is like liquid gold
almost this is an experimental vaccine
that as we’ve gotten ahold of in the
ferret program we know that in lab
trials it works very well on black food
ferrets and this is good old Clara all
nice and easy natural black number 122
we can put a little bit of black dye on
his neck and then you know it’s nobody
we already trapped up we don’t have to
deal with them okay his head’s here here
we go we we put them back in the same
burrow from where we trap them
especially the kits especially the young
of the year because they’re still
potentially tied to their to their
mother
you got you got lucky they usually go
right down the hole that’s cool
there’s no textbook on how to captive
breed and reintroduce black-footed
ferrets so a lot of this was learned by
trial and error during 85 and 87 they
were able to trap the last 18 black for
difference that existed Meeteetse
Wyoming those animals went to a captive
breeding center in Wyoming and that’s
when the captive breeding effort started
big deal just take a look at it here
we’ve got a little boy all the blood
sweat and tears that myselfin a lot of
other individuals have from this program
are really paying off
we have wild black food ferrets
reproducing on the ground a fully
fledged self-sustaining population here
in South Dakota it’s us from the most
satisfying feelings I’ve had my career
so far
the team has worked the night shift on
this Prairie for five years to ensure
these black footed creatures their
historic
America’s plane
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