“In a victory for conservation, a cloned endangered animal has birthed healthy offspring for the first time in the United States. The black-footed ferret, named Antonia, is also the first cloned ferret to give birth worldwide. Antonia produced two adorable kits at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) in Front Royal, Virginia, earlier this summer. The news marks a groundbreaking achievement in the use of cloning to preserve genetic diversity in endangered species,” reports the Smithsonian:
Black-footed ferrets, also known as American polecats, are carnivorous relatives of weasels with dark patches around their eyes and paws. They are also one of the most endangered mammals in North America because of habitat loss, diseases and a decline in the population of prairie dogs, their main prey, per Newsweek’s Jess Thomson.
As many as one million black-footed ferrets lived on the continent in the late 1800s, but by the late 1950s, the species was presumed extinct. Scientists discovered a wild population in 1964, but even that group died out, and a captive breeding effort failed. Since a second rediscovery of a wild population in 1981, conservationists have worked hard to conserve the species using traditional breeding programs as well as more innovative technologies, including freezing semen and cloning.
One of the challenges conservationists face when tasked with bringing back a species from the brink of extinction is limited genetic diversity, which leads to inbreeding and can make offspring more vulnerable to issues, including hereditary abnormalities, poor reproductive efficiency and increased mortality rates…..The current population of black-footed ferrets—thousands of which have been reintroduced across the western U.S. since the 1990s—is all descend from just seven individuals, except for a few clones and Antonia’s new offspring. That’s a recipe for genetic bottlenecks that threaten the longevity of the species.
To remedy that, scientists cloned a long-dead ferret. Back in 1988, researchers had the foresight to collect tissue samples from a ferret named Willa when she died. They preserved the samples in San Diego’s Frozen Zoo. Willa died without having offspring, so her genes were not present among living ferrets. Her genes have three times more genetic diversity than living black-footed ferrets’ genes have. So by cloning her, scientists created a ferret with far more genetic diversity (Antonia) — and that ferret’s offspring also have more genetic diversity.
In other good news, the red-cockaded woodpecker is no longer an endangered species, as it grows in number.
North America’s most endangered bird, the Florida grasshopper sparrow, is also making a comeback.
Recently, a long-lost species of butterfly returned to Pittsburgh, after being missing since 1937. It returned after its food source also returned to Pittsburgh: the pawpaw, a creamy banana-like fruit native to North America. “Zebra swallowtail butterfly caterpillars feed off the leaves of the pawpaw tree, while the mature adults will often feed on the pawpaw’s nectar as well as minerals from the soil surrounding the trees.”
Sturgeons recently returned to Sweden, a century after they disappeared.
Fish species are rebounding off the California cast as their young find a sanctuary in abandoned oil rigs.
Wild horses recently returned to Kazakhstan after being absent for two centuries. Florida’s manatees have rebounded to their highest number in years.
Last year, carnivorous plants returned to English wetlands. In Spain, the Iberian lynx is no longer endangered.
