Just 18 black-footed ferrets survived in 1986; about 400 are now back in wild

A species once feared lost forever is slowly finding its way back across the American plains. In 1986, just 18 black-footed ferrets remained known to science. Today, roughly 400 are estimated to live in the wild, following decades of captive breeding and reintroduction efforts, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. The latest sign of that recovery came in May, when six black-footed ferret kits were born at the Smithsonian’s research campus in Front Royal, Virginia. The litter, born to a two-year-old first-time mother named Mizuno, is part of the cooperative recovery programme for one of North America’s most endangered mammals.From believed extinct to 18 survivorsBlack-footed ferrets once ranged widely across the Great Plains, where they depended heavily on prairie dog colonies for food and shelter.