Ferrets vs Logan County - Ferrets win thanks to Larry Haverfield

Thank you, Mr. Haverfield!

The state judge ruled against Logan County, which sought to exterminate the prairie dog population on a private 10,000-acre ranch. Poisoning off the prairie dogs, which are the favorite prey of the black-footed ferret population that was reintroduced to the ranch in 2007, would have been a death sentence to the ferrets.


Ninety-eight percent of the prairie dog population of the Great Plains has been wiped out, and the remaining 2 percent are still subject to the “kill them all” statute put into play in 1901, when a pre-conservation mindset saw the near extermination of the state’s whitetail and mule deer, wild turkeys, bison, pronghorn elk and prairie dogs.

This article raises some additional questions for me too, though:

The ranchers’ legal battles started in 2008 when they refused to allow Logan County exterminators to poison the prairie dogs on their property. A district judge recognized that the FSW had defined the ranch as a promising site for reintroduction of black-footed ferrets and slapped the county with a restraining order.

Logan County tried to repeal that ruling, but on Sept. 20 Judge Jack Lively ruled that the restraining order would stand. The Haverfield-Barnhardt ranch and the 90-feet vegetative boundary that surrounds it are permanently off-limits to poisoning.

Why was Logan County attempting to apply poison to Mr. Haverfield's privately owned land? As I see it, Mr. Haverfield not only stood up for the black-footed ferrets, he stood up for private land rights and against putting poison into our habitats.

Baby Sea Turtles Rescued From the Gulf Oil Spill, Relocated to Florida's Space Coast

Reprinted with permission:

Have Prairie Dog, Will Travel

The Thunder Basin National Grassland in Wyoming is the site of a new recovery habitat for North America’s most endangered mammal, the Black-Footed Ferret. But before any ferrets can be introduced, conservationists need to ensure that the eco-system will support them. To do that, the U.S. Forest Service began relocating black-tailed prairie dogs to the area in July and continuing through August.

The black-tailed prairie dogs have long been considered pests to ranchers, making them the target of mass poisonings and sport shooting. Consequently, prairie dog populations plummeted which in turn caused a decline in species that eat them, especially the black-footed ferret.

So now a team of federal agencies and conservation organizations including the U.S. Forest Service, Wyoming Game and Fish Department, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Defenders of Wildlife, The Humane Society of the United States, World Wildlife Fund, and the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance are relocating prairie dogs from two sites considered too close to private land to the Thunder Basin National Grassland area. This prairie dog relocation effort is the first of its kind on U.S. Forest Service land, and Forest Service agents hope to reintroduce the black-footed ferrets as soon as 2011.

Black-Footed Ferrets in Steamy Sex Scandal

It's all over the internet... Romance novelist Cassie Edwards used entire passages from Paul Tolme's article in her book, Shadow Bear. Reading Paul's article about the incident in Newsweek had me laughing out loud.

"They are so named because of their dark legs," Shadow Bear says, to which Shiona responds: "They are so small, surely weighing only about two pounds and measuring two feet from tip to tail."

Shiona then tells Shadow Bear how she once read about ferrets in a book she took from the study of her father. "I discovered they are related to minks and otters. It is said their closest relations are European ferrets and Siberian polecats," she says. "Researchers theorize that polecats crossed the land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska, to establish the New World population."

I know that the language in romance novels can be often be stilted, but a pioneer woman talking about "Researchers theorize" and the Bering land bridge and "the New World" was just too funny.

That said, I'm glad she did it. Had she not, I might not have discovered Paul Tolme's articles, and that would have been unfortunate indeed. In addition to "Toughing It Out in the Badlands", which provided that scintillating post-coital conversation in "Shadow Bear", I highly recommend "Pure Poison" about proposals to kill thousands of prarie dogs in South Dakota. As any ferret fan knows, those endangered prarie dogs are vitally important to the survival of the black-footed ferret, the only native species of ferret we have.

In future entries, I will be writing more about this situation, as well as discussing the importance of the very same prarie lands these animals live on to our ecological well-being. In the meantime, I hope you will enjoy Paul Tolme's articles as much as I have, and be sure to visit his web site for even more great articles.