A cloned black-footed ferret named Noreen, Feb. 19, 2024, at the National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center.CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Two more black-footed ferrets have been cloned from the genes used for the first clone of an endangered species in the U.S., bringing to three the number of slinky predators genetically identical to one of the last such animals found in the wild, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wednesday.
Black-footed ferrets are now a conservation success story — after being all but wiped out in the wild, thousands of them have been bred in captivity and Because they feed exclusively on prairie dogs, they have been victims of farmer and rancher efforts to poison and shoot the land-churning rodents — so much so that they were thought to be extinct, until a ranch dog named Shep brought a dead one home in western Wyoming in 1981.