Black-footed ferrets have been reintroduced to the Arizona landscape for the first time in nearly three decades, according to the Arizona Game and Fish Department.
In partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Ferret Conservation Program, 10 of the little critters were released in the Aubrey Valley area, about an hour west of Flagstaff, Game and Fish said in a news release.
The ferrets were only reintroduced after scientists were able to combat forest plague, which Game and Fish describes as one of the biggest threats to black-footed ferrets.
“We could not begin to recover this population without understanding ferret die-offs,” Holly Hicks, the state agency’s senior small mammal management specialist, wrote in the news release.
The bacterial disease also affected the ferret’s main prey, the Gunnison prairie dogs, damaging the entire ecosystem for the animals, partly leading to a decline of more than 100 ferrets in Arizona since the early 2000s.
“Now we are focusing on the fleas that transmit plague between prairie dogs and ferrets…We are treating the prairie dogs with the same active ingredient found in flea medications for dogs and cats,” Hicks wrote.
Four black-footed ferret kits from the Phoenix Zoo.
All of the newly introduced ferrets were bred in captivity across the country, including at the Phoenix Zoo.
The ferrets learned how to hunt and survive in the wild at a facility in Colorado before being vaccinated and released into the wild.
The ferrets were also chipped, just like cats and dogs, so that they could be studied in the future.
Game and Fish planned to conduct controlled releases of ferrets in the fall and spring over the next three years and collect data to better understand ways to control forest plague.
Ferrets were released in the same area earlier in September.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Game and Fish uses science to reintroduce ferrets to Arizona
