article thumbnail

The Why of Ferrets

10,000 Birds

Sorry for banging on about black-footed ferrets, but here’s a bit on why this trip was so special to me: Forty years ago the black-footed ferret was a bit more like the Loch Ness Monster than it is today. The species was extinct, a vanished part of the vanishing prairie — and not for the first time.

Ferrets 184
article thumbnail

Acclimatisation Societies of New Zealand

10,000 Birds

There are the endemics, which are odd in their own way, and then there introduced species, which are so varied in their type and origin that you get the feeling you’ve arrived at the aftermath of a small zoo that escaped. What is surprising is quite how many species did end up here, and how economically unimportant they were.