There's no time to think of ferrets' future at Fort Carson

Talking isn’t allowed in the Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center.

The forced quiet is meant to keep the animals calm. And the few people allowed into this closed area of Cheyenne Mountain Zoo must wear surgical masks and sterile booties instead of shoes, safeguards to prevent the spread of disease to one of the most endangered mammals in the world.

Thirty years ago, the black-footed ferret, which once roamed the length of the Front Range and much of the Great Plains, was thought extinct. The last recorded sighting in Colorado was in 1943, and when the last ferret in captivity died in 1979, it was thought to be extinct.

The discovery of a single black-footed ferret in Wyoming in 1981 led to a captive breeding program, and for 20 years the zoo has been one of five in the world where the ferrets are bred. The number of black-footed ferrets in the wild has grown from 18 in 1985 to 1,000.

Despite their efforts, and the meticulous care to ensure the ferrets remain healthy and virile, zoo conservationists and federal wildlife officials can’t establish a foothold for them in Colorado. The only release site, in northwestern Colorado, contained only a single ferret at last count, and hopes to establish a colony at Fort Carson have faded, as Army officials have put the project on the back burner.

“We have two breeding facilities in the state and no recovery sites in the state, and it’s a big hole in the middle of the country where ferrets should be,” said Della Garelle, the zoo’s director of conservation.

Ferret program needs a champion

The barren stretch of Fort Carson identified as possible ferret habitat, 2,370 acres near the base’s southern boundary in Pueblo County, was considered ideal. It’s protected from outside incursion and development and has plenty of prairie dogs, the ferrets’ food source.

In December 2008, Carson announced the reintroduction plan to great fanfare. It was hoped, the Army announced, that ferrets could be introduced in the fall of 2009.

Not long after, however, there was a change in personnel at the post; deputy garrison commander Tom Warren was reassigned, and the military put the project on hold. It has yet to be restarted.

“The driving force behind the concept didn’t have a champion anymore,” said Michael Seraphin, Colorado Springs spokesman for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, which was to be a partner in the project.

Col. Robert McLaughlin, the Fort Carson garrison commander who took over in June 2009, met with zoo staff in the fall of that year, but the ferret program has not been a priority.

“I listened to what they had to say about the ferret,” McLaughlin said last week. “We just haven’t moved forward with any kind of program,.”

Asked if Fort Carson would consider ferret reintroduction, he said, “I have not thought much about it, because right now we’re focusing on the redeployment of the 3rd Brigade and the training of the 2nd Brigade.”

Plague is a ferret's enemy

At the zoo, breeding season starts around Valentine’s Day.

Males begin to enter their breeding cycle in February, and by April or May the females are ready. The usually solitary ferrets enjoy three days sharing a cage and artificial burrow, and 42 days later, if all goes well, a litter is born. The young selected for release are sent to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service facility in Fort Collins. They “graduate” by showing they can kill a prairie dog, and then they are released.

The zoo has bred 379 ferrets since 1991, 160 of which have been released. Shy yet curious, the ferrets spend most of their short lives below ground, raiding prairie dog networks.

There are 19 reintroduction sites around the West. Only two, in Wyoming and South Dakota, have self-sustaining populations.

The main problem is disease. Non-native plague, along with habitat loss and poisoning of prairie dogs by farmers, nearly drove the ferrets to extinction, and the disease continues to take its toll on prairie dogs and thenewly released ferrets.

Plague would have been present at the Carson site, as well, but scientists were eager to try experimental methods of inoculating the animals in the controlled setting of a military base.

Reintroduction can hamstring landowners

The most common criticism of the federal Endangered Species Act, and the main cause of concern over species reintroductions, are the regulations that come with having endangered animals on a property — just ask the developers in northern El Paso County who spend millions to protect habitat for the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse.

Peter Gober, black-footed ferret recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency would have allowed anything at the Carson site except the deliberate killing of ferrets.

“We were prepared to write the permits that training activities could continue. If they wanted to do away with their prairie dogs with poison, that could continue. We’d just pick up the ferrets and take them somewhere else,” Gober said.

But Colorado Springs City Councilman Sean Paige said that despite the agency’s assurances the reintroduction could cause problems for training at Fort Carson and even lead the military to consider closing the post someday.

“Just because we breed them here at the zoo doesn’t mean we need to place colonies on an active military base that will come to inhibit our training on that base,” said Paige, a vocal critic of the Endangered Species Act.

“There’s a place to do these reintroductions and there’s a place not to do them, and I think a military base is not a place to do them, given the important national security work that goes on there.”

“You want to be cooperative and help these animals flourish, but the wave of regulations that accompany them can be a deterrent,” Paige said.

Ferrets' future is optimistic

With the Carson reintroduction on hiatus, the Fish and Wildlife Service is back to square one in the efforts to reintroduce the ferrets in Colorado.

Said Gober, “Colorado seems to have the majority of the black-tailed prairie dog habitat. They could play a prominent role in ferret recovery but they’ve just been hamstrung.”

In Wyoming, ferret releases are also controversial. The state has fought efforts to create new colonies, and landowners have canceled reintroductions out of fear their land use will be limited and they won’t be permitted to kill nuisance prairie dogs.

Gober said the agency is talking to other landowners in southern Colorado about the possibility of reintroductions.

Garelle and others at the zoo are frustrated by the lack of progress in re-establishing ferret populations, but they remain optimistic about the animals’ future, thanks to the breeding program.

Said Garelle, “I’m hopeful, as long as we have the habitat. There are only people in the way.”