Black-Footed Ferret
This cute little guy has quite the conservation saga. The black-footed ferret is the only native North American ferret species and was actually thought extinct in the 1970s, after decades of serious decline in prairie dog populations, the ferrets’ main food source. In 1981, a small population of the ferrets was discovered in Wyoming, after a dog tussled with one of the critters and brought back a body to its owner, who took it to a taxidermist for identification. Since then, a program to breed the ferrets in captivity and reintroduce them to the wild has increased their numbers to around 300.
