Drones are the blackfooted ferret's last hope

The flea-borne sylvatic plague has wiped out most of the ferret’s favorite snack—prairie dogs—and when the dogs die, so do the ferrets. So the US Fish and Wildlife Service wants to use drones to sprinkle peanut butter-flavored plague vaccines over the prairie dog’s habitat. If it gets approved, the agency wants to start testing the method in UL Bend National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Montana, where they’ve been trying to reestablish a ferret population for more than two decades.  “It’s a good year if it takes more than two hands to count them all,” says USFW biologist Randy Matchett. “As of a month ago, there were seven ferrets on the site and many, many thousands of prairie dogs.” It takes 100 acres of prairie dogs to support a female ferret and her litter for a year. On a 1,200-acre lot like UL Bend, 12 ferret families could flourish—once the USFW gets rid of the darn plague, that is. That’s why US Geological Survey epizootiologist Tonie Rocke and a team of scientists at the University of Wisconsin concocted the world’s first prairie dog vaccine back in the early 2000s. You wish you got these vaccines as a kid: They’re delivered orally, via delicious, peanut butter-smothered bait. (“It’s organic,” adds Rocke.) And while they don’t have the hard coating of an M&M, they’re roughly the same size and shape, with the texture of a chewy energy bar. Prairie dogs are big fans, eating up to 90 percent of the goodies in field tests.