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UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO BRING BLACK-FOOTED FERRETS BACK TO KANSAS
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 BY RON KLATASKE
As many of you know, three heroic ranch landowner families and Audubon of Kansas have been working for the past two years with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to implement an experimental reintroduction of Black-footed Ferrets on a 10,000-acre ranch complex south of Russell Springs. It now appears that with the continuing support of you and other conservation partners, and a little luck, as many as forty captive-bred ferret kits may be destined to return to the short grass prairies of this state. Members of this endangered species could be on the ground-and in among the prairie dog colonies that provide essential habitat and prey-within a few weeks, months, or by the fall of 2008 at the latest.
We can greatly enhance chances of the experimental reintroduction by writing letters of support for the proposal, and contributing any supportive information that you want the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to consider. Letters to the Service's Denver office should be mailed before November 19. Unfortunately, the Service did not set up an e-mail address for this purpose. However, if you prefer to send an e-mail, Audubon of Kansas will package and mail any letters addressed to the Service that are e-mailed to AOK@AudubonofKansas.org
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U.S. FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE SEEKS PUBLIC OPINION ON DRAFT ENVIRONMENT ASSESSMENT FOR REINTRODUCTION OF BLACK-FOOTED FERRETS IN LOGAN COUNTY, KANSAS
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 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) is asking for public comment on a Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) and Application for an Enhancement of Survival Permit. The Service is proposing reintroduction of Black-footed Ferrets on private lands in Logan County, Kansas.
The private land proposed for reintroduction of the black-footed ferret is currently used as grazing land and is bordered by other private grazing and crop lands. Each property supports active prairie dog colonies that have been evaluated and determined potentially suitable for black-footed ferrets. The proposed reintroduction experiment would continue for 5 years, after which it may be terminated or continued indefinitely depending upon the level of success and cooperating landowner desires.
The most notable landowners who have initiated a willingness to host the Black-footed Ferret reintroduction include Larry and Bette Haverfield, Gordon and Martha Barnhardt, and Maxine Blank. They have also been carrying the burden for everyone with their legal initiatives in trying to fend off the efforts by the Logan County Commission to eradicate prairie dogs from the county. The Kansas Farm Bureau is pushing that same agenda as a way of blocking the ferret reintroduction program.
"The Service will certify, in writing, to all cooperating landowners and their neighbors that black-footed ferrets will not interfere with the rights of landowners to manage their property, including legal means of prairie dog control, if ferrets leave designated release properties and enter nearby lands," said Steve Guertin, Acting Regional Director for the Service's Mountain-Prairie Region. "The Service is committed to maintaining property rights of neighbors and other landowners who do not desire ferrets or prairie dogs."
Copies of the draft EA and application are available by visiting http://mountain-prairie.fws.gov/species/mammals/blackfootedferret/, or by calling the Service's Mountain-Prairie Regional Office at 303-236-4256. Written comments must be submitted by November 19, 2007 to the Assistant Regional Director, Fisheries-Ecological Services, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, P.O. Box 25486, DFC, Denver, CO 80225-0486, or by fax 303-236-0027.
Black-footed ferrets, one of the rarest mammals in North America, were once found throughout the Great Plains, from northern Mexico to southern Saskatchewan, Canada. Their range extended from the Rocky Mountains east through the Dakotas and south through Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The national goal to improve the status of the species from endangered to threatened is to establish 10 free-ranging populations of ferrets, spread over the widest possible area within their former range. To meet this delisting goal, it is hoped that 1,500 breeding adult ferrets will be established in the wild by the year 2010.
Black-footed ferrets are found almost exclusively in prairie dog colonies. Prairie dogs are their principal prey, and ferrets live and rear their young in prairie dog burrows. Black-footed ferrets have one litter each year, with an average of about three kits per litter. In the wild, kits do not come above ground until they are two-three months old. Mothers and young remain together until early fall. By October, the kits are able to take care of themselves.
For additional information please contact the Audubon of Kansas office at (785) 537-4385 and visit our website: http://www.audubonofkansas.org.
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LOGAN COUNTY COMMISSIONERS AND FARM BUREAU PUSH TO ERADICATE PRAIRIE DOGS AND BLOCK BLACK-FOOTED FERRET REINTRODUCTION
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 BY RON KLATASKE
If your schedule allows, please join me and two western Kansas families--our state's most courageous wildlife conservationists--at a 10 a.m. court hearing on Tuesday morning, November 20, in Topeka. These wildlife friendly ranch landowners will be there as Plaintiffs to defend their efforts to keep the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks (KDWP) from issuing additional permits allowing use of Phostoxin on their land, and the Logan County Commission from poisoning their land with Phostoxin--a toxic gas that kills all living organisms in prairie dog burrows. Please come to Judge Charles Andrews' court room in the Shawnee County Courthouse. Audubon of Kansas' Board of Trustees and members are strongly supportive of these ranch landowners and we remain unwavering allies. We hope others will join us there as well.
The landowners' attorney, Randall K. Rathbun of Wichita, obtained a Temporary Restraining Order on September 10. However, the Logan County Commission (with the urging of the Kansas Farm Bureau) is now trying to turn the tables and is asking the court to order the landowners to remove their livestock from their ranches from "the 1st day of October, 2007, until the 15th day of March, 2008." During this time, the county plans to "use Rozol to exterminate the prairie dogs" on their lands, and send them the bill for the cost, tens of thousands of dollars. Rozol cannot be applied to the land when livestock are present, so the Logan County Commissioners and the Kansas Farm Bureau want to force removal of the livestock.
For those of you who thought the Kansas Farm Bureau supported property rights, think again. The organization's anti-wildlife agenda trumps that consideration.
Starting more than two years ago, Logan County Commissioner Carl Uhrich has been pushing to essentially exterminate Black-tailed Prairie Dogs and the county's two other commissioners have followed his lead. During much of this same period the Kansas Farm Bureau and the Logan County Farm Bureau have been pushing the commission to force landowners to eradicate prairie dogs--and do whatever they can to make it impossible for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to proceed with the experimental reintroduction of Black-footed Ferrets in the county.
In August 2006 the Farm Bureau met with and urged the Logan County Commission to take proactive action and "use alternative chemicals or such appliances and material...to exterminate...prairie dogs in a diligent fashion. Waiting until October only compounds the problem. Action is needed immediately." The Farm Bureau wanted to eliminate the prairie dogs even if it involved chemicals other than those normally used and registered for legal use between October and March 15. The objective was to eliminate this keystone species essential for the survival of Black-footed Ferrets before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) could publish a proposal to consider the reintroduction of ferrets.
Ironically, just three years earlier, a consortium of conservation and agricultural organizations worked together to develop a state "Kansas Black-tailed Prairie Dog Conservation & Management Plan" published by KDWP in July 2002. The plan was an attempt to fulfill the state's wildlife stewardship responsibilities and to also keep the species from being listed as federally threatened. The plan calls for establishment of at least prairie dog complexes of 5,000 acres or more--exactly what Larry Haverfield and Gordon Barnhardt have accomplished. The Kansas Farm bureau participated in that committee, but has sense blocked any and all efforts to advance conservation of the species, declaring now that conservation of the species is no longer a concern of theirs because it is not currently being considered by USFWS for federal listing.
Likewise, the conservation and management plans presented by these two ranchers are consistent with the "Kansas Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Plan" published by KDWP as a 162-page document in October 2005. The overall goal for this plan is to keep common species common, thus preventing the continual march of species towards state and federal endangered species listings. The plan was also designed to help recover imperiled species--exactly what the Haverfields and Barnhardts are trying to accomplish with their management of 10,000 acres with Swift Foxes, Burrowing Owls, Ferruginuous Hawks, Golden Eagles and Black-footed Ferrets in mind.
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PHOTO CREDITs:
1ST FERRET: DEAN BIGGINS, USGS
2ND FERRET: U.S. FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE
PRAIRIE DOGS & BURROWING OWLS: RON KLATASKE
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