differentiates their approach from western conservationists, who often emphasize “management” of habitat and wildlife that humans have dominion over, said Julie Thorstenson, executive director of the Native American Fish & Wildlife Society.“Western science looks at humans as kind of external managers of the land and of the ecosystem,” she said. “Indigenous people see themselves as part of it.”
Prior to European settlement as many as one million ferrets occupied an estimated 156,000 square miles from Canada to Mexico — wherever prairie dogs were found. By the 1960s, conversion of grasslands to crops, plague and poisoning campaigns reduced prairie dogs to 2,200 square miles . Ferrets were presumed extinct then rediscovered in 1981 on a ranch in Meeteetse, Wyoming.
The work to reestablish black-footed ferrets and swift foxes is different. Unlike bison and salmon, foxes and ferrets aren’t food sources. They live in the shadows, hunting mostly at night, and are rarely seen.Ferrets have been reintroduced to seven reservations on the Northern Plains and two tribal sites in the Southwest, while swift foxes have been returned to four reservations, said Shaun Grassel, a former biologist for the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe in South Dakota.
“It sustains itself, it helps Mother Earth, everything sustain balance,” Moore said of the restoration work celebrated that day. “Prairie dogs, wolves, swift fox, red fox, black-footed ferrets.”
Awesome. I commend these students for their effort in saving these species.
Wow! it's something adorable that lives on this planet. Yes. Save them all!