BFFS! BLACK-FOOTED FERRETS

Author/photographer Bond offers an introduction to one of North America’s most endangered animals in this book for young readers.

Black-footed ferrets—a different mustelid species than domesticated ferrets—live and breed solely within extensive colonies created by prairie dogs, which are also the ferrets’ main food source: They “eat the entire prairie dog: fur, bones, and all!” After a ferret is “born as tiny as a human’s pinky finger, with their eyes and ears closed,” Bond writes, they leave the den and strike out on their own at five months of age; then they face various predators, such as coyotes and bobcats. Black-footed ferret populations have declined over the years, due to introduced diseases and the loss of natural grasslands; by 1979, they were believed to be extinct. The last known population was discovered in Wyoming in 1981, but disease struck the colony and, five years later, only 10 remained. Since then, a captive-breeding program has reintroduced descendants of those survivors to more than 30 sites throughout the American Great Plains; still, fewer than 400 currently live in the wild. The book includes extensive resources for learning more about “BFFs,” as well as an interview with biologist Dean Biggins, who captured most of the ferrets that formed the captive-breeding program. The majority of the text is simple, and young readers will find it easy to understand; Bond ably conveys even complex information about the ferret conservation program in an uncomplicated way. Her full-color wildlife photography is frankly magnificent, offering readers a terrific sense of what these animals are like in the wild; a series showing ferrets leaping and pouncing as they “take turns charging toward one another in a pretend attack” is especially dynamic. Taken as a whole, the book has everything young readers could want in an introductory wildlife book.

An ideal resource for those wanting to learn more about these intriguing creatures.