PRESS RELEASE
November 13, 2007
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For Immediate Release
Contact:
Ron Klataske
Director, Audubon of Kansas
(785) 537-4385
aok@audubonofkansas.org
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Black-footed Ferrets May Join Whooping Cranes as an Endangered Species in Kansas
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LOGAN COUNTY--Every spring and fall, Kansas hosts one of the country's most stately endangered species: the Whooping Crane, in their migratory stopovers between their wintering grounds on the Texas Gulf Coast and their nesting grounds in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Within the next few months to a year, Kansans may play host to another federally endangered species, the Black-footed Ferret. If they are reintroduced as wildlife conservationists have proposed and several ranch landowners welcome, they will be home again in a state where they may have once been most abundant prior to their plunge to near extinction.
Black-footed ferrets are one of the rarest mammals in North America. They 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. As prairie dogs have been poisoned down to about 2 percent of their historical abundance, Black-footed Ferrets have been the most dramatically affected. Other species, including Burrowing Owls, Swift Foxes, Ferruginous Hawks and Golden Eagles, are also highly dependent on prairie dog colonies for habitat and/or prey.
Black-footed ferrets were once found throughout the Great Plains, from northern Mexico to southern Saskatchewan, Canada. The national goal is to improve the status of the species from "endangered" to "threatened" by establishing 10 sustainable wild populations at various sites within their former range.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is asking for public comment on a Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) and Application for an Enhancement of Survival Permit to establish an experimental reintroduction. The Service is proposing reintroduction of Black-footed Ferrets on specific private ranch lands with receptive landowners in Logan County, Kansas.
One of the most promising sites for reintroduction consists of three contiguous ranches totalling approximately 10,000 acres owned by Larry and Bette Haverfield, Gordon and Martha Barnhardt and Maxine Blank. The property contains 5,000 acres of scattered prairie dog colonies.
The landowners have established a comprehensive prairie dog management plan that includes ungrazed buffer strips to serve as vegetative barriers on the perimeter of the ranches to discourage expansion of the prairie dog colonies to neighboring land, and control of prairie dog populations along the boundary. In addition, Audubon of Kansas is working with them to establish special fencing to further enhance prospects of the containment. For lethal control, the landowners have been utilizing shooting and a toxicant that does not present a secondary poisoning threat to eagles, hawks, Swift Foxes and other predators.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has also offered to pay for control of prairie dogs on surrounding properties. This ensures that conservation of this important prairie dog complex and the proposed experimental reintroduction of Black-footed Ferrets is a win-win situation for people on both "sides of the fence." 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.
Audubon of Kansas, a strong supporter of the Black-footed Ferret reintroduction plan, has included on its website, www.audubonofkansas.org, considerable information about the proposal and related prairie dog issues.
The Kansas Farm Bureau and the Logan County Commission are opposed to reintroduction of Black-footed Ferrets and have both called for eradication of prairie dogs on these and other ranches.
The issue of imposed prairie dog eradication will be the subject of a hearing before Judge Charles Andrews in the Shawnee County District Court in Topeka on Tuesday, November 20.
The Landowners' attorney, Randall K. Rathbun of Wichita, obtained a temporary restraining order on September 10 preventing the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks (KDWP) from issuing additional permits allowing use of Phostoxin--a toxic gas that kills all living organisms in prairie dog burrows--on their land. The restraining order also prohibits the Logan County Commission from poisoning the landowners' land with Phostoxin or Rozol.
In addition, the Logan County Commission 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 commissioners seek to "use Rozol to exterminate the prairie dogs." Rozol cannot be applied to the land when livestock are present, so the Logan County Commissioners want to force removal of the livestock. The cost for extermination would be in the tens of thousands of dollars, and if conducted--with or without permission of the ranch families--it would be a cost imposed on the landowners.
Once the prairie dogs have a lethal dose of Rozol, it often takes them days or weeks to die. If they die above ground, they are subject to predation by numerous other animals. Thus, Rozol presents a secondary poisoning threat to eagles, hawks, Swift Foxes, Badgers and other predators.
For those wanting to show their support for the landowners who oppose the poisoning of prairie dogs in Logan County, the hearing over the issue of imposed prairie dog eradication is at 10 a.m. on November 20 at the Shawnee District Courthouse, 200 SE 7th St. in Topeka, Kansas. It is open to the public.
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