Ted Turner ranch aims to aid endangered black-footed ferrets

A more than half-million-acre ranch that straddles the New Mexico-Colorado border and is owned by media mogul Ted Turner has asked for permission to import endangered black-footed ferrets. The carnivores have struggled across the Great Plains, and the Vermejo Park Ranch wants to bolster their numbers as part of a recovery program spanning 12 Western states. It will be up to the New Mexico Game Commission to clear the way for a permit for the ranch. Biologists at the ranch have been working for years to recover the species, but this marks the first time they have to jump through an extra hoop of review because of a regulatory change involving the importation and release of carnivores on private land in New Mexico. State wildlife officials say the change is aimed at bringing more transparency to the approval of such proposals and doing so in a way that allows for public comment. Previously, only approval from the director of the New Mexico Game and Fish Department was needed. Critics, including the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, contend the change was an attempt to stall the recovery of other more controversial endangered species, namely the Mexican gray wolf, and that the ferret was caught in the crossfire. Pete Gober, the federal government’s ferret recovery coordinator, said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working with private landowners like Turner and smaller ranching operations to implement a 10-year plan for boosting ferret numbers across the region. That plan calls for adding several more reintroduction sites to the current 21. But the work goes beyond simply releasing ferrets into wide open spaces. “It’s not that you’re going to rewind the clock and walk away and it’s going to tick forever. It’s going to take continued management,” Gober said. At Vermejo Park Ranch, biologists started out with a captive breeding program that helped supply ferrets to the Fish and Wildlife Service for transplantation. That morphed into efforts by the ranch to establish its own population...more