Tag: black-footed ferrets
How Long Should a Species Stay on Life Support?
At about 3:30 a.m., four hours into our drive, Travis Livieri’s phone began to thrum. “I’ve got a ferret for you,” a voice crackled through the static. The animal in question was one of North America’s most endangered mammals, for which the next hour might be the strangest of her life; for Livieri, the wildlife biologist tasked with saving her, it would be one of thousands of interventions he’s made to prevent her kind from permanently vanishing. Over the
We Made Wild Animals Sick. Should We Vaccinate Them Too?
Every year, at the end of August, Travis Livieri drives into the sandy grasslands of South Dakota’s Conata Basin, where, armed with spotlights and syringes, he spends his nights scooping up subjects for a grand experiment they could not hope to understand. His quarry are the region’s black-footed ferrets, considered by many to be North America’s most endangered mammal. His goal is to save the animals from the existential bind that we have put them in.
Black-footed ferrets once dotted