Northern Plains tribes bring back their wild 'relatives'

Students and interns from the tribal college are helping reintroduce the small predators to the northern Montana reservation.

Native species such as swift foxes and black-footed ferrets disappeared from the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation generations ago, wiped out by poisoning campaigns, disease and farm plows that turned open prairie where nomadic tribes once roamed into cropland and cattle pastures.

Now with guidance from elders and outside wildlife groups, students and interns from the tribal college are helping reintroduce the small predators to the northern Montana reservation sprawling across more than 1,000 square miles (2,600 square kilometers) near the U.S.-Canada border.

Sakura Main, a 24-year-old Aaniiih woman who is entering Fort Belknap's Aaniiih Nakoda College in January, is helping to locate, trap and vaccinate the severely endangered ferrets against deadly plague in a program overseen by the tribal fish and game department.

The nocturnal animals live among the mounded burrows of prairie dog colonies, where ferrets stalk the rodents almost as big as they are, wrapping themselves around their prey to strangle and kill it.

On a recent clear night, the Nakoda sacred site Snake Butte looming on the horizon, Main shined a flashlight into a long, skinny, wire trap atop a prairie dog burrow. Inside was the second ferret that she'd caught that night with fellow wildlife worker C.J. Werk, daughter of the former tribal president.

“We got one in there!" Main quietly exclaimed.

“Wow, really another one?" replied Werk, who was engaged in a friendly competition with another worker, her cousin, to catch the most ferrets. “I'm going to rub it in.”