Nap Time for Bandit

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.

Broward Ferret Rescue & Referral Announces 2nd Annual Ferret Spooktactular

The event will be held Saturday, October 16th from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Lauderdale Surf Club, 2 Palm Avenue, Lauderdale by the Sea, Florida. Admission is $7.00 per person with proceeds going to support the Ferret Rescue.

Although our ferrets can not attend this particular event, be sure to bring photos of your favorite fuzzies in costume. Prizes will be awarded for "Best Costume" in both the Ferret and Human catagories. (Costumes for the humans are not required but highly encouraged) There will also be food, games, a raffle and a guest speaker - a fun night for a good cause.

The Broward Ferret Rescue & Referral is a small "no kill" shelter founded in 2000. In 2004, it became a 501c3 non-profit organization so your donations are tax deductible. PETCO, ZuPreem and many other corporate sponsors help support the Rescue and its events. Additional support comes from individual memberships, and from fundraising events such as the Annual Ferret Spooktacular.

Melanie Dawn Molina Wood

Melanie Dawn Molina Wood: "I connected Blogger to my http://flavors.me page - http://flavors.me/melaniedawn"

Ferrets, LED lighting and Wind Cave National Park - Oh My!

It is not often that I can write about two of my favorite subjects in one blog post, but Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota allows me to do just that.

Wind Cave was the first cave in the world to be designated as a national park. Opened in 1903 it is currently the fourth longest cave in the world, and explorers are still discovering new passage ways. The cave system is also known for its “boxwork, an unusual cave formation composed of thin calcite fins resembling honeycombs. ”

On July 4th, 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service employees reintroduced black-footed ferrets to a small prairie section of the 28,295 acres of mixed-grass prairie and ponderosa pine forest that make up the above ground area of the national park. At the time, acting superintendent Rick Mossman was quoted as saying, “It has been thirty years since the last sighting of a black-footed ferret in Wind Cave National Park. We hope this is the start of a self sustaining population that will restore a missing link to our mixed-grass prairie ecosystem.”

A year later, park superintendent Vidal Davila reported fourteen kits were counted in the primary reintroduction areas during four nights of surveying. And last year, park rangers began offering summer night hikes to educate visitors and, if they are lucky, so they can see the Black-Footed Ferrets in the wild.

And in June of this year, the park replaced the cave’s incandescent lighting system with LEDs. The $2 million project was paid for entirely from park ticket sales. It is expected to reduce the lighting bill by about 80% and helps cut back on the algae growth generated by the heat of the old incandescent lights. As an added bonus the LEDs highlight the true colors inside the cave.



For more information about Wind Cave National Park, visit http://www.nps.gov/wica/

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.