Wild Again. David S. Jachowski
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the village of Kyle and the other in the vicinity of Oglala. John Limehan was owner and operator; also he operated a small country store. At that time there was an Indian agent or farm agent, Willis Adams, who assisted me a lot, arranging for lunches, helping to hunt up owners (mostly Indian operators) for releases, inquiring of finances and the like. He was one that I took along who got a look at the last mentioned ferret (#6). The Superintendent (Sanderson) at that time of Pine Ridge Agency once went along to supposedly also look at it, but, of course, wandered off in a nearby untreated section with his .22 rifle obviously unmoved to anything but the excitement of shooting off a few prairie dogs.
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The first attempt to restore black-footed ferrets was linked to Walt Disney of all people, in his company’s production of the film The Vanishing Prairie. In 1953, federal predator and rodent control agent George Barnes was enlisted to live trap three black-footed ferrets from Fall River and Jackson Counties, South Dakota, and release the ferrets into Wind Cave National Park for the film crew. Of the three he brought to Wind Cave, only one survived until January 1954, but the precedent was set. The survival of at least one suggested restoration was possible, and the park requested six more ferret pairs. To increase the supply of ferrets for relocation, the State of South Dakota mailed a specially designed round aluminum trap to each rodent control specialist working in the western part of the state. With Disney-like visions of heroes and villains, my young mind could not yet wrap itself around the thought of enlisting the prairie dog exterminators to save the declining predator. I couldn’t understand how biologists who were hired to kill, wholesale and without remorse, the singular prey species on which ferrets depend, were at the same time trying to save the predator.
Over the following years, Ralph saw ferrets on multiple prairie dog towns across South Dakota, including one to the north in Haakon County near the Cheyenne River:
Not over a mile or mile and a half from the Bridges Day school on land owned by Chicago Cattle Co. (now known as Western Cattle Co.)—owner Wm. Norton. This one the crew also saw; in fact, it sat or stood immobile all the while we ate lunch nearby—almost like a statue. By the way, they can be caught easily. At that time the area was being extensively tested for oil leases. They used long electric detonator wires of plastic coating wound loosely. They made ideal snares.
In the summer of 1956 I worked a joint program on Standing Rock Reservation, Sioux County, North Dakota, Carson County, South Dakota. While working I stayed at Fort Yates, North Dakota. It was then that one more ferret was observed in a prairie dog town in just about the exact site of old Fort Manuel Lisa, just above the mouth of Hunkpapa Creek, Careen County, South Dakota. This fort was built in 1812 as a depot from which to hold the loyal Missouri River Indians loyal to the American cause. It was in reality a military post built under the guise of a fur post and destroyed in 1813 by allied Indian tribes. Also Fort Manuel is the purported grave of Sacagawea (Bird Woman) guide for Lewis and Clark in 1804. There is a lot of controversy regarding whether or not Sacagawea was buried there; some historians claim she is buried in Oregon. This ferret was located on a prairie dog town which could be about 10 miles below the North Dakota line and by the way this prairie dog town also yielded many relics from an ancient Arikan village which sat on the identical site. I should state prairie dogs seem to like an area that has had a farmstead for habitat. They like ridges where old fence lines were located.
The last one I saw was in 1958 in a dog town at a point just about almost straight south of the city dump of Mobridge, South Dakota or 2–2½ miles east of the Sitting Bull monument west of Mobridge on land at that time owned by Ted Sogge, who has since moved due to inundation by Oahe reservoir.
Ralph tallied a total of thirteen individual ferrets from 1949 to 1964, a period when he also “treated” 145,000 acres of prairie dogs with Compound 1080 and strychnine across South Dakota, North Dakota, and adjoining lands in Nebraska. After reading pieces of Ralph’s life for the previous few weeks, I was crushed when I read in Ralph’s last letter that he believed that “these little animals do not succumb to eating treated prairie dogs” but rather survive and just shift their diet to other things. I thought he knew his work over the past fifteen years was killing off the species he was growing to love. He had observed too much, come to know them so well, yet denied his actions had consequences like a guilty war veteran trying to justify the actions of his youth: “Walt Stammerjohn worked Rosebud and saw quite a few. Also, he worked in Carson County when I did and saw quite a few. Harvey Gibson, mentioned [he saw] six. I think he lived in He Dog village when he worked at Rosebud. I forgot to ask William Pullin how many he has seen. I’m sure Geo Baines at Custer could add on. For now they are still with us and I don’t feel they are in the whooping crane, key deer or dodo bird class.”
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In 1964, biologists under Stuart Udall, then Secretary of the Interior, began putting together a list of rare and endangered animals, a precursor to the Endangered Species Act. That same year, Secretary Udall appointed an advisory board to investigate the federal government’s role in killing wildlife, including prairie dogs, wolves, bobcats, grizzly bears, and a host of other species. Called the Leopold Board after chairman Dr. A. Starker Leopold (oldest son of the famous wildlife biologist Aldo Leopold), the group put forward what became known as the “Leopold Report” in March 1964. They acknowledged that the black-footed ferret was “near extinction, and the primary cause is almost certainly poisoning campaigns among the prairie dogs,” asserting that “far more animals are being killed than would be required for effective protection of livestock, agricultural crops, wildlife resources, and human health.”
By 1964, the U.S. Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife (predecessor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) was still poisoning more than a quarter-million acres of prairie dogs per year, but South Dakota still had some remnant prairie dog colonies. As eloquently described by Faith McNulty in the book Must They Die?, bureau employees in South Dakota like Bill Pullins were pulled in two directions. While still mandated to assist in the extirpation of prairie dogs, bureau employees also were increasingly thinking about conserving the black-footed ferret, wondering why there were so few ferrets and what could be done to increase their numbers.
Even with this newfound interest in studying ferrets, there were very few known populations left to study. The first official study of ferrets was done on Earl Adrian’s ranch a few miles south of White River, South Dakota, where they had been spotted in 1964. South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks biologist Bob Henderson had a passion to study the rare mammal, but his boss allowed him to take up the hobby only if it did not interfere with his other duties. Henderson promised to keep his ferret studies under the radar, but even so, Earl Adrian didn’t want a government employee on his land. Instead, he forced Henderson and his colleague, Dr. Paul Springer at the South Dakota Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, to hire his son, Dick Adrian, to conduct the study.
Bob Henderson and Dick Adrian set up camp on a southern prairie dog colony on the family ranch and observed ferrets day and night from August 1964 to August 1965. They were the first researchers to use spotlights at night to find the reclusive animal, watch its behavior, and learn about its ecology. True to the original 1929 description by Ernest Thompson Seton, a ferret is “like a mouse in cheese, for the hapless prairie dogs are its favorite food.” Ferrets never left the prairie dog colonies, only coming out of the labyrinth of underground prairie dog burrows for a few hours during the night, hiding behaviors from the researchers who could only guess how they killed prairie dogs and reared their young. On occasion, the researchers saw a female ferret move her litter across the prairie dog town single file like a “toy train.” In the end, like so many wildlife studies, they raised more questions than answers, still wondering how often ferrets dispersed between colonies, and asking a question that still puzzles ecologists: How many prairie dogs does a ferret require?
At the same time, the critical question was how many other ferret populations existed. Black-footed ferret sightings became increasingly rare. Hundreds of letters came in with word-of-mouth stories of ferret-like creatures that almost always sounded more like confusion with the common long-tailed weasel. Sightings were reported in Kansas, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, and Manitoba. In the official record, the majority of ferret sightings occurred in South Dakota. Yet even in South Dakota, confirmed ferret sightings were rare. Never more than twelve in a year, and of