Rare Ferrets Being Released At Rocky Mountain Arsenal Refuge
COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (AP) - Rare black-footed ferrets will be released Monday at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge — a milestone for the highly endangered animals and for the former toxic waste site on the industrial edge of Denver.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to turn 30 ferrets loose on the 25-square-mile refuge where chemical weapons and pesticides were once manufactured.
It became a wildlife refuge in 2010 after a $2.1 billion cleanup.
Black-footed ferrets were once thought to be extinct, but a small colony was discovered in 1981 in Wyoming. Researchers have been trying to restore the population since then.
The long, slender creatures have short legs, appealing faces and an appetite for prairie dogs, which make up 90 percent of their diet. Adult ferrets can be up to 24 inches long and weigh 2½ pounds.
Ferrets' historic range extended from southern Canada to northern Mexico and eastern Nebraska to western Arizona, but their numbers plummeted as prairie dogs were exterminated as pests and the habitat was consumed by development.
Ferrets are bred in captivity at sites in Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Virginia and Ontario, Canada, then prepared for release in outdoor pens where they can kill prairie dogs.
Officials estimate about 300 ferrets now live in the wild from Canada to Mexico. They have been reintroduced at 24 sites in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, and in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan and the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
The recovery is overseen by the Black-Footed Ferret Recovery Program, a joint effort of state, federal and tribal agencies, universities, and wildlife groups.
At the Rocky Mountain Arsenal refuge, the ferrets will join a bison herd that was reintroduced in 2007. The refuge is also home to prairie dogs, deer, rabbits, coyotes, eagles, hawks, meadowlarks and other native plains wildlife.
The refuge is in the northern suburb of Commerce City, with the downtown Denver skyline visible to the west.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story stated that black-footed ferrets were rediscovered in Wyoming in 1982, but that took place in 1981.
By DAN ELLIOTT, Associated Press
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