By Karen Brulliard, The Washington Post
In the summer, we reported on a government plan to fly ammunition-firing drones over the middle of America to save an adorable native animal on the brink of extinction. Now there’s video of the project, and while it’s no adrenaline-infused action film, it’s pretty cool.
The stars are endangered black-footed ferrets and their primary prey, prairie dogs, both of which spend time on screen popping their heads out of the underground burrows they both depend on. The supporting actors are government, wildlife and drone experts who have been toiling to devise efficient ways to vaccinate prairie dogs against the sylvatic plague. The disease kills prairie dogs — and thus leaves the ferrets with little to eat. The backdrop is the breezy, blue-skied American grassland where the critters reside.
The props are all-terrain vehicles and a red drone that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service describes as an 18-pound, “750 mm umbrella style multi-rotor copter in an X8 (coaxial) configuration.” It’s a fairly small contraption that looks closer to a flying model airplane than an armed drone over the mountains of Pakistan.
The ATVs and drones are being tested for use in firing blue, peanut-butter flavored pellets that are the size of a gumball. The bait is laced with plague vaccine, and Fish and Wildlife says 60 to 90 percent of the prairie dogs gobbled it up in recent trials in Montana, Colorado and South Dakota.
“These tests clearly indicated that these new mechanized vaccine delivery methods are practical, efficient and affordable,” the agency said in a statement.
More tests are scheduled for next summer, and Fish and Wildlife says this first-of-its-kind effort is worth it. A healthy population of black-footed ferrets – North America’s most endangered species — signals a healthy ecosystem, according to the agency.
If those videos don’t quench your thirst for black-footed ferret footage, Fish and Wildlife also hosts a webcam of a ferret named Two-bit, who lives at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery. A word of warning: The ferrets are nocturnal, so there’s not a lot of daytime action.
