Arizona agency looking for volunteers to search for endangered ferrets
Mar 7, 2019, 7:15 PM | Updated: Mar 8, 2019, 2:19 pm
(Pixabay Photo)
(Pixabay Photo)
PHOENIX — The Arizona Game and Fish Department is looking for volunteers to help it locate endangered ferrets outside Flagstaff.
The agency is holding two search sessions — March 21-25 and April 18-21 — in Aubrey Valley and Double O Ranch near Seligman.
Volunteers will use high-powered lights to spot the nocturnal black-footed ferrets between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Volunteers must be able to use a GPS and be accompanied by a parent if under 18.
Anyone interested in the ferret search can sign up by emailing azferret@azgfd.gov.
The agency captured nine ferrets last year with the help of 140 volunteers, who put in 1,500 hours of search time, according to a press release.
The country’s ferret population took a dive in the late 1900s when an effort to eradicate prairie dogs took away the ferrets’ main food source, according to the agency’s website.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service considered declaring them extinct in the 1970s, but a group was found in Wyoming in 1981 and placed into a breeding program.
The ferrets were reintroduced to Arizona in 1996 after a 60-year absence.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, there are only about 300 black-footed ferrets currently living in North America.
