Why are Democrats Endangering North America’s Black-Footed Ferret Population?

Why are Democrats Endangering North America’s Black-Footed Ferret Population?

As the nation heads into another week of the “Schumer Shutdown,” the media is beginning to show signs of desperation.

The U.S. Senate has failed seven times to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to pass the House of Representatives’ funding bill. Currently, only John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada), and Angus King (Maine, Independent who caucuses with Democrats) have broken with the Blue herd and voted “yes”.

Now worry and consternation are arising as the government shutdown continues. However, it is not the Republicans feeling the strain…which is a shocking change from past shutdowns.

The media is beginning to realize that the past narratives that previously drove down Republican popularity numbers are starting to fail. The press’s anxieties were probably severely exacerbated by Vice President JD Vance nuking the Democrat talking points on all the Sunday shows this weekend.

🚨 JUST IN: JD Vance tells Chuck Schumer and the Democrats to SHOVE IT after they decided to hold the government hostage for illegal aliens

“This isn’t a dealmaking. This isn’t a negotiation. This is HOSTAGE TAKING.”

“You don’t come into the Oval Office and say, ‘unless you,… pic.twitter.com/S9eoglW01T

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 12, 2025

So, now the press is taking an innovative “hostage puppy” approach to diffuse the disaster. Except, in this case, the animal being threatened is the endangered black-footed ferret.

Of all the communities across America impacted by the government shutdown, the population of endangered black-footed ferrets may be among the smallest and most vulnerable.

This rare species, safeguarded under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, teeters on the brink of extinction, with about 300 existing in the wild.

Now, with biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service furloughed because of the shutdown, a critical release of 400 captive-bred ferrets, designed to strengthen their wild populations, is in jeopardy.

“It just really makes us all very nervous,” said Chamois Andersen, a senior leader at Defenders of Wildlife, a key non-profit partner on the federal agency’s Black-Footed Ferret Recovery Plan. “It’s not something we can play around with, in terms of the timing and the funding. It’s that endangered of a species.”

At issue is that the employees currently being furloughed were slated to release captive-bred animals into the wild.

Fewer than 1,000 black-footed ferrets remain on the planet, including around 280 captive-bred ones currently being housed at the National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center in Carr, Colorado. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had planned to reintroduce them at 15 sites across federal, tribal and private lands this fall, according to the conservation organization Defenders of Wildlife. Instead, the creatures are caught in the political crossfire, with the program at a standstill due to furloughed employees and travel restrictions, the nonprofit wrote in a news release.

“If we can’t get those ferrets on the ground, it would be incredibly unfortunate,” Chamois Andersen, a senior representative with Defenders of Wildlife, told SFGATE in a phone interview.

It’s crucial that the ferrets be released during this optimal window, Andersen said, because they need time to acclimatize to the wild prairies of the Great Plains and prepare for the winter months.

“This is the time of year when kits would typically leave their parents and make a living on their own,” she said. “They’ll learn to hunt and survive before winter hits and hopefully den up with one another to bolster the overall population with kits come spring.”

It is being reported that nonprofit groups raised $500,000 for this year’s ferret frenzy.

Before the government shutdown, NPR was complaining about how President Donald Trump’s plans to revise the definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act would be “callous and reckless.”

The Trump administration is proposing to significantly limit the Endangered Species Act’s power to preserve crucial habitats by changing the definition of one word: harm.

On Wednesday, the administration proposed a rule change that would essentially prohibit only actions that directly hurt or kill actual animals, not the habitats they rely on. If finalized, the change could make it easier to log, mine and build on lands that endangered species need to thrive.

“Habitat loss is the biggest single cause of extinction and endangered species — it makes sense to address it,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. He called efforts to deny that cause “callous and reckless.”

Arguably, then, the Senate Democrats’ failure to vote for the House funding bill is callously and recklessly harming the plans to protect the cute ferrets.

This video has more on the adorable and endangered species:

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