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And many people sweating blood and tears to save endemic fishes like the Bonytail, the razorback sucker, the Colorado Pikeminnow, the four Ambystoma species of

And many people sweating blood and tears to save endemic fishes like the Bonytail, the razorback sucker, the Colorado Pikeminnow, the four Ambystoma species of tiger salamanders, the California Red-legged frog, the Giant and San Francisco Gartersnakes, the California Ridgway's rail. Without talking of the endangered freshwater clams, snails and crustaceans of California. This man is not a hero. Feral ferrets would treat tens of species of endangered animals of California. They even maybe could block an hypothetical future reintroduction of the American polecat (unlikely, as is a pairie dog specialized hunter from Central US, but not impossible as is one of the most endangered mammals of US). All this effort could be destroyed for the lack of vision of one single man and the "but is so cute" trap. Nature is too important to be left to the caprices of pet owners.

jasonhansel 4y ago
1. Wouldn't requiring ferrets (aside from the limited number needed for breeding) to be spayed or neutered greatly reduce this risk? 2. Don't feral cats and dogs also pose a threat to ecosystems? Why should the threat to endangered species necessarily outweigh the significant psychological benefits of pet ownership? 3. Couldn't feral ferrets from one of the many states where they are already legal easily make their way into California anyway? 4. Since many people violate the ferret ban anyway, wouldn't legalizing and regulating the keeping of ferrets result in more responsible ferret ownership?
- pvaldes 4y ago
  1. Neutered animals still hunt, one single racoon released in a small Spanish Island by idiots almost wiped the entire colony of an endangered marine bird in two years. 2. One problem does not exclude the other. Ferrets live in freshwater systems. Can swim and eat amphibians, fishes and molluscs. They know how to manage toads to remove the poison glands and then eat the toad entire. Feral cats don't like frogs, and avoid entering in water unless necessary. Cats favor to live near humans and are quickly extirpated from wild areas with raptors. Ferrets instead, dive into crevices and rocks, remain hidden and are much more hard to hunt. 3. They could and they should be eliminated if you want to save the Californian fauna. In any case "I want to be allowed to violate the law in my state, because the other states don't care and is free for all there" is a false dichotomy. 4. Not. You would just increase the number of ferrets and the probability of escape. To start, entire litters would be released by the animalist crew (100% of probability if the species is legally allowed to breed). Moreover, ferrets aren't dogs, they enter in each hole of crevice that see, and need to investigate it, even for days. They will not return to you when you call them so (unlike cats and dogs), if you let your pet play in the garden alone for one minute, you will lose it. Entire females in heat are an "hormonal bomb" they either mate or die by stress if let alone. This mean that they travel a lot in search of a male.
  - olalonde 4y ago
    > one single racoon released in a small Spanish Island by idiots almost wiped the entire colony of an endangered marine bird in two years That's crazy. Do you have a link to that?
    - pvaldes 4y ago
      Let me refresh my memory Checked. I stand corrected. It was a few months, not two years and the seabird was not an endangered species globally (but can be locally). It happened in the National park of Timanfaya almost twenty years ago. At the end of June-2003, a trail of depredated corpses of Scopoli's shearwaters started to appear. The area is dry and the invisible predator left no traces and almost no faeces to examine. The National Park staff suspected a ferret as main candidate. Dogs, cats or even badgers were also in the list, some camera traps were set and eventually show a racoon. Until caught at the end of the summer, the final "bodycount" was 100 shearwaters killed (plus the orphaned chicks unable to survive without the parents). This just by one single racoon in a single summer. The animal was tame, not afraid of people and was clearly a released pet. If it hadn't happened in a national park no one would have bothered to hunt it. I only found a link in Spanish, you can use google translate if you are curious about the details. https://www.abc.es/espana/canarias/abci-capturado-mapache-causado-muerte-cien-pardelas-timanfaya-200310150300-214072_noticia.html https://www.abc.es/espana/canarias/abci-capturado-mapache-ca...
      - xbar 4y ago
        Similar but different, invasive rats in Galapagos have been particularly destructive in the past 50 years. https://galapagosconservation.org.uk/invasive-black-rats-in-galapagos/ https://galapagosconservation.org.uk/invasive-black-rats-in-...
      - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
        "Wild" North American raccoons here in their native range are also completely unafraid of people. Or even dogs. At least in urban areas. They basically "know" that they can't really be messed with, because it's not typically legal to shoot them, they have nasty teeth and claws, and they're ridiculously smart.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > Don't feral cats and dogs also pose a threat to ecosystems? Yes, but that doesn't mean we should make it worse. > Why should the threat to endangered species necessarily outweigh the significant psychological benefits of pet ownership? Because ecosystem collapse could kill us or at the very least be very expensive in the long run. We're not gods, so we depend on the ecosystem working. > Couldn't feral ferrets from one of the many states where they are already legal easily make their way into California anyway? Maybe, but that doesn't mean we should make it worse.
- ip26 4y ago
  Don't feral cats and dogs also pose a threat to ecosystems? Yes. Cats in particular are a disaster. Ecologists have been trying to figure out how to effectively control feral populations and convince people to stop letting domestic cats outdoors for decades. "It's already a disaster so what's the harm in making it a whole lot worse" is not the most compelling argument.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Keep in mind that ferrets will displace some amount of cats.
tzs 4y ago
Has this happened in the 48 states (all but California and Hawaii) where ferrets are not banned? How about Canada where they appear to be legal in all provinces? All I've been able to find on this is the paper "Environmental Impact and Relative Invasiveness of Free-Roaming Domestic Carnivores—a North American Survey of Governmental Agencies" [1] which looked at the impact of non-native domestic carnivores (dogs, cats, and ferrets) in the US and Canada. It says this in the discussion section: > Aside from an occasional “stray”, there were no reports of “feral (breeding)” ferrets; nor were there reports that of “free-living”, or “naturalized” ferrets anywhere in the continental United States or Canada, including California. More importantly, no jurisdiction reported ferrets impacting local (native) wildlife, including ground-nesting birds, or threatened, endangered and sensitive species. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664037/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664037/ Edit: this comment seems quite controversial. In a few minutes it got several up votes, then quickly got twice as many down votes, then quickly returned to about even. I'm quite confused by this.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  Re your 'Edit' comment again, update to my earlier reply. Well, same has happened to me again. It would be interesting to know why so many people get angry at relatively neutral comment and won't say why in open debate (especially so on HN): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31957321#31957871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31957321#31957871 :-)
- frosted-flakes 4y ago
  Rats are illegal in Alberta, and it is one of the few populated areas of the world without rats. Of course, the ban was put into place before the province was over-run with them, and an aggressive rat-killing program was put into place along it's eastern border with Manitoba to stop them migrating any further. https://www.domyown.com/images/content/rat_distribution_map_global.png https://www.domyown.com/images/content/rat_distribution_map_...
- ttyprintk 4y ago
  Tasmania and Australia proactively eradicate feral colonies.
namlem 4y ago
Ferrets are legal in neighboring Oregon and Nevada. Do they cause serious problems in those states?
- sigzero 4y ago
  Nope. Been legal in Virginia for 30+ years and nada.
sigzero 4y ago
Except that hasn't happened in any other State where Ferrets are legal and have been for many many years. Hmmm.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and maybe we are just not looking carefully at it. Or maybe the damage was yet done. In any case this is the old area of distribution of the American polecat. Is extinct from all the red area. If you look carefully you will spot three tiny blue dots. This is the area with actual wild populations of American polecat, in the entire planet. https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8qbxp4Sx6gI/W3S5UtX7E3I/AAAAAAABDP0/viZf9Afhu34-uas_vXVkgPoZWJ1UtWiZwCLcBGAs/s400/Mustela_nigripes.gif https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8qbxp4Sx6gI/W3S5UtX7E3I/AAAAAAABD...
  - gwern 4y ago
    > Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and maybe we are just not looking carefully at it. Or maybe the damage was yet done. If it existed, then enemies of ferrets like yourself, who go so far as to trot out anecdotes about raccoons halfway across the world, would know after all these decades. And the California state regulators would quickly invoke it in their defense. It doesn't exist because it doesn't exist, not because no one cares or is ignorant. This whole topic does illustrate the benefit of federalism in serving as 'the laboratories of democracy': if ferrets were banned federally, how would we ever know how absurd and false all your arguments about the vast ecological harms of ferrets were? It would be a case of the seen and the unseen. But with federalism, we can simply look at the other 49 states and roll our eyes at the hyperbole. They aren't perfect natural experiments, but they do fine here.
    - pvaldes 4y ago
      You would be surprised about how many things we still don't know in Biology. But we do know a few things... for example that European and American polecats are mammals in the same genus and close genetically. So close that both are susceptible to the same diseases and in particular to the same viruses. How do I know that? Because I'm interested in pathology of vertebrates. We know also that the American polecat went extinct, and that diseases played a main role in that. Check the bibliography. Are you following me? So when you say that there was "not any measurable effect". Yes, in fact there is a clear perfectly observable effect. The closest carnivore to European polecats went extinct in the wild. Why? > benefit of federalism in serving as 'the laboratories of democracy': I refuse to enter in political stupidity molasses. We are talking about nature problems here.
jpadkins 4y ago
> Feral ferrets Citation needed. Where in the other 49 states is this scourge of feral ferrets? Domesticated ferrets are to known to die fairly quickly if they escape to the wild. They have no hunting instincts. If you are worried about feral animals, why would you allow cats but not ferrets?
- ip26 4y ago
  why would you allow cats Ecologically speaking, we shouldn't. But the cat is already out of the bag, so to speak.
- mutatio 4y ago
  > Domesticated ferrets are to known to die fairly quickly if they escape to the wild. Citation needed. Seems like feral ferrets exist in Ireland: https://invasivespeciesireland.com/species-accounts/established/terrestrial/feral-ferret https://invasivespeciesireland.com/species-accounts/establis... If ecological history has shown anything, it's that things shouldn't be "tried out" to see if they do indeed become an issue.
  - sigzero 4y ago
    That's a different scenario though. They were brought in to curb other animals. They weren't domesticated ferrets let loose in the wild.
  - jpadkins 4y ago
    Almost all pet ferrets are sprayed and neutered. Female ferrets die if they go in heat and don't mate. https://www.westdavisvets.com/veterinary-topics/ferret-health https://www.westdavisvets.com/veterinary-topics/ferret-healt... Maybe CA would have a position if they banned ferret breeding farms, but banning pet ferrets is simply dumb.
- smegger001 4y ago
  wild cats were already here, they just have been driven out by humans so house cat fill the niche while being able to live beside humans successfully.
ejb999 4y ago
>>Nature is too important to be left to the caprices of pet owners. I agree - read up on what is going on in the everglades with the explosion of huge pythons (many were former pets released into the wild) - they have already killed of something like 99% of the small mammals in the everglades, and they are not even close to containing the problem yet.
- sigzero 4y ago
  The isn't happening with ferrets. Ferrets have been legal in other States for many many year (over 30+ years in Virginia for example) and "feral ferrets" is not only not a problem but doesn't happen because they DIE quickly in the wild.
Supermancho 4y ago
> Feral ferrets would treat tens of species of endangered animals of California. They die at temperatures that are a sustained sub-65 degrees or sustained 100+ degrees (which you can demonstrate with a live ferret, although I wouldn't recommend it). The blackfooted ferret (endangered) is native to California. The claim that domestic sable ferrets would be invasive is ridiculous on it's face. > Nature is too important to be left to the caprices of pet owners. The CA fish and game commission is completely ideologically captured as they do not want to engage in any sort of scientific study for the non-existence of existing process (beyond a simple decree) or legal jeopardy that they may become embroiled in, after the fact. They much rather enjoy their salaries mediating the relatively safe cases of licensing and managing bureaucratic rules around existing fish and game. There's also the uncomfortable truth that people do possess ferrets in CA. Pet stores stock goods for them and vets treat them. People all around CA let their ferrets roam outside and come back in when it gets colder at night (and to get food/water). Young adult/College dorms and apartments are rife with ferret owners. Again, the claims about ferrets being a "potentially" invasive species are specious, at best.
- the_watcher 4y ago
  I was just thinking about the last paragraph. I honestly didn’t know they were illegal in CA, since I had so many friends that owned them growing up (inland southern CA). They bought food at the pet store, brought them in for show and tell, etc. They didn’t hide it at all.
  - bragr 4y ago
    As apposed to all the other illegal things people do right out on the open?
- pvaldes 4y ago
  The European polecat (same species as the domestic ferret), inhabits a territory that goes from Finland to Spain. They live in western Russia and also in Morocco. They are adapted to a wide range of temperatures and climates. If you think that an animal living in Moscow can't survive temperatures below 18 Celsius, well, think again. In particular they feel pretty at home in the Mediterranean, so would survive perfectly in the Mediterranean weather of California as long as they find something to eat. There is little doubt about it. And, as is close genetically to the American polecat, and as ferrets need to breed when in heat, there is a danger of genetic contamination or displacement of the ultra-rare American polecat. I agree that most mammals will boil and turn delicious at 100 degrees
oldstrangers 4y ago
A lot of these "ferret fears" come from ignorance about what happened in New Zealand in the late 1800s / early 1900s. Domestic ferrets were crossbred with European polecats and brought to New Zealand specifically to counter rabbit overpopulation. They introduced a man made killing machine to run through rabbit populations, and unsurprisingly the hybrid ferrets did the job very well. Now they thrive on the island as an invasive species. All that said, these ferrets are genetically distinct from domesticated ferrets. They are not remotely the same thing. A domestic ferret in the US would last all of 8 minutes in the wild.
ramblerman 4y ago
Honest question, what makes you more qualified? You talk as if there is "some" desired state for nature to be in, and that you know what it is. To be clear, I have no issue with you lobbying your viewpoint, but I find it takes a bit of hubris to pretend to do it on behalf of "nature".
- pvaldes 4y ago
  > Honest question, what makes you more qualified? More qualified than whom?
ajford 4y ago
So can you explain how a number of escaped pet-trade ferrets can grow into a force that can threaten an ecosystem when they are unable to increase their population size?
- pvaldes 4y ago
  You need to think bigger. There are several ways. Eating all the remaining individuals in a local population of an endangered animal until splitting the species in two isolated areas unable to survive, would be the obvious one. For example, a professional of ecology would ask him/herself questions like "are the Parvoviruses of asymptomatic ferret pets unable to increase their population size"?

jasonhansel 4y ago

1. Wouldn't requiring ferrets (aside from the limited number needed for breeding) to be spayed or neutered greatly reduce this risk? 2. Don't feral cats and dogs also pose a threat to ecosystems? Why should the threat to endangered species necessarily outweigh the significant psychological benefits of pet ownership? 3. Couldn't feral ferrets from one of the many states where they are already legal easily make their way into California anyway? 4. Since many people violate the ferret ban anyway, wouldn't legalizing and regulating the keeping of ferrets result in more responsible ferret ownership?

pvaldes 4y ago
1. Neutered animals still hunt, one single racoon released in a small Spanish Island by idiots almost wiped the entire colony of an endangered marine bird in two years. 2. One problem does not exclude the other. Ferrets live in freshwater systems. Can swim and eat amphibians, fishes and molluscs. They know how to manage toads to remove the poison glands and then eat the toad entire. Feral cats don't like frogs, and avoid entering in water unless necessary. Cats favor to live near humans and are quickly extirpated from wild areas with raptors. Ferrets instead, dive into crevices and rocks, remain hidden and are much more hard to hunt. 3. They could and they should be eliminated if you want to save the Californian fauna. In any case "I want to be allowed to violate the law in my state, because the other states don't care and is free for all there" is a false dichotomy. 4. Not. You would just increase the number of ferrets and the probability of escape. To start, entire litters would be released by the animalist crew (100% of probability if the species is legally allowed to breed). Moreover, ferrets aren't dogs, they enter in each hole of crevice that see, and need to investigate it, even for days. They will not return to you when you call them so (unlike cats and dogs), if you let your pet play in the garden alone for one minute, you will lose it. Entire females in heat are an "hormonal bomb" they either mate or die by stress if let alone. This mean that they travel a lot in search of a male.
- olalonde 4y ago
  > one single racoon released in a small Spanish Island by idiots almost wiped the entire colony of an endangered marine bird in two years That's crazy. Do you have a link to that?
  - pvaldes 4y ago
    Let me refresh my memory Checked. I stand corrected. It was a few months, not two years and the seabird was not an endangered species globally (but can be locally). It happened in the National park of Timanfaya almost twenty years ago. At the end of June-2003, a trail of depredated corpses of Scopoli's shearwaters started to appear. The area is dry and the invisible predator left no traces and almost no faeces to examine. The National Park staff suspected a ferret as main candidate. Dogs, cats or even badgers were also in the list, some camera traps were set and eventually show a racoon. Until caught at the end of the summer, the final "bodycount" was 100 shearwaters killed (plus the orphaned chicks unable to survive without the parents). This just by one single racoon in a single summer. The animal was tame, not afraid of people and was clearly a released pet. If it hadn't happened in a national park no one would have bothered to hunt it. I only found a link in Spanish, you can use google translate if you are curious about the details. https://www.abc.es/espana/canarias/abci-capturado-mapache-causado-muerte-cien-pardelas-timanfaya-200310150300-214072_noticia.html https://www.abc.es/espana/canarias/abci-capturado-mapache-ca...
    - xbar 4y ago
      Similar but different, invasive rats in Galapagos have been particularly destructive in the past 50 years. https://galapagosconservation.org.uk/invasive-black-rats-in-galapagos/ https://galapagosconservation.org.uk/invasive-black-rats-in-...
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      "Wild" North American raccoons here in their native range are also completely unafraid of people. Or even dogs. At least in urban areas. They basically "know" that they can't really be messed with, because it's not typically legal to shoot them, they have nasty teeth and claws, and they're ridiculously smart.
guerrilla 4y ago
> Don't feral cats and dogs also pose a threat to ecosystems? Yes, but that doesn't mean we should make it worse. > Why should the threat to endangered species necessarily outweigh the significant psychological benefits of pet ownership? Because ecosystem collapse could kill us or at the very least be very expensive in the long run. We're not gods, so we depend on the ecosystem working. > Couldn't feral ferrets from one of the many states where they are already legal easily make their way into California anyway? Maybe, but that doesn't mean we should make it worse.
ip26 4y ago
Don't feral cats and dogs also pose a threat to ecosystems? Yes. Cats in particular are a disaster. Ecologists have been trying to figure out how to effectively control feral populations and convince people to stop letting domestic cats outdoors for decades. "It's already a disaster so what's the harm in making it a whole lot worse" is not the most compelling argument.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Keep in mind that ferrets will displace some amount of cats.

tzs 4y ago

Has this happened in the 48 states (all but California and Hawaii) where ferrets are not banned? How about Canada where they appear to be legal in all provinces? All I've been able to find on this is the paper "Environmental Impact and Relative Invasiveness of Free-Roaming Domestic Carnivores—a North American Survey of Governmental Agencies" [1] which looked at the impact of non-native domestic carnivores (dogs, cats, and ferrets) in the US and Canada. It says this in the discussion section: > Aside from an occasional “stray”, there were no reports of “feral (breeding)” ferrets; nor were there reports that of “free-living”, or “naturalized” ferrets anywhere in the continental United States or Canada, including California. More importantly, no jurisdiction reported ferrets impacting local (native) wildlife, including ground-nesting birds, or threatened, endangered and sensitive species. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664037/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664037/ Edit: this comment seems quite controversial. In a few minutes it got several up votes, then quickly got twice as many down votes, then quickly returned to about even. I'm quite confused by this.

hilbert42 4y ago
Re your 'Edit' comment again, update to my earlier reply. Well, same has happened to me again. It would be interesting to know why so many people get angry at relatively neutral comment and won't say why in open debate (especially so on HN): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31957321#31957871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31957321#31957871 :-)
frosted-flakes 4y ago
Rats are illegal in Alberta, and it is one of the few populated areas of the world without rats. Of course, the ban was put into place before the province was over-run with them, and an aggressive rat-killing program was put into place along it's eastern border with Manitoba to stop them migrating any further. https://www.domyown.com/images/content/rat_distribution_map_global.png https://www.domyown.com/images/content/rat_distribution_map_...
ttyprintk 4y ago
Tasmania and Australia proactively eradicate feral colonies.

namlem 4y ago

Ferrets are legal in neighboring Oregon and Nevada. Do they cause serious problems in those states?

sigzero 4y ago
Nope. Been legal in Virginia for 30+ years and nada.

sigzero 4y ago

Except that hasn't happened in any other State where Ferrets are legal and have been for many many years. Hmmm.

pvaldes 4y ago
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and maybe we are just not looking carefully at it. Or maybe the damage was yet done. In any case this is the old area of distribution of the American polecat. Is extinct from all the red area. If you look carefully you will spot three tiny blue dots. This is the area with actual wild populations of American polecat, in the entire planet. https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8qbxp4Sx6gI/W3S5UtX7E3I/AAAAAAABDP0/viZf9Afhu34-uas_vXVkgPoZWJ1UtWiZwCLcBGAs/s400/Mustela_nigripes.gif https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8qbxp4Sx6gI/W3S5UtX7E3I/AAAAAAABD...
- gwern 4y ago
  > Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and maybe we are just not looking carefully at it. Or maybe the damage was yet done. If it existed, then enemies of ferrets like yourself, who go so far as to trot out anecdotes about raccoons halfway across the world, would know after all these decades. And the California state regulators would quickly invoke it in their defense. It doesn't exist because it doesn't exist, not because no one cares or is ignorant. This whole topic does illustrate the benefit of federalism in serving as 'the laboratories of democracy': if ferrets were banned federally, how would we ever know how absurd and false all your arguments about the vast ecological harms of ferrets were? It would be a case of the seen and the unseen. But with federalism, we can simply look at the other 49 states and roll our eyes at the hyperbole. They aren't perfect natural experiments, but they do fine here.
  - pvaldes 4y ago
    You would be surprised about how many things we still don't know in Biology. But we do know a few things... for example that European and American polecats are mammals in the same genus and close genetically. So close that both are susceptible to the same diseases and in particular to the same viruses. How do I know that? Because I'm interested in pathology of vertebrates. We know also that the American polecat went extinct, and that diseases played a main role in that. Check the bibliography. Are you following me? So when you say that there was "not any measurable effect". Yes, in fact there is a clear perfectly observable effect. The closest carnivore to European polecats went extinct in the wild. Why? > benefit of federalism in serving as 'the laboratories of democracy': I refuse to enter in political stupidity molasses. We are talking about nature problems here.

jpadkins 4y ago

> Feral ferrets Citation needed. Where in the other 49 states is this scourge of feral ferrets? Domesticated ferrets are to known to die fairly quickly if they escape to the wild. They have no hunting instincts. If you are worried about feral animals, why would you allow cats but not ferrets?

ip26 4y ago
why would you allow cats Ecologically speaking, we shouldn't. But the cat is already out of the bag, so to speak.
mutatio 4y ago
> Domesticated ferrets are to known to die fairly quickly if they escape to the wild. Citation needed. Seems like feral ferrets exist in Ireland: https://invasivespeciesireland.com/species-accounts/established/terrestrial/feral-ferret https://invasivespeciesireland.com/species-accounts/establis... If ecological history has shown anything, it's that things shouldn't be "tried out" to see if they do indeed become an issue.
- sigzero 4y ago
  That's a different scenario though. They were brought in to curb other animals. They weren't domesticated ferrets let loose in the wild.
- jpadkins 4y ago
  Almost all pet ferrets are sprayed and neutered. Female ferrets die if they go in heat and don't mate. https://www.westdavisvets.com/veterinary-topics/ferret-health https://www.westdavisvets.com/veterinary-topics/ferret-healt... Maybe CA would have a position if they banned ferret breeding farms, but banning pet ferrets is simply dumb.
smegger001 4y ago
wild cats were already here, they just have been driven out by humans so house cat fill the niche while being able to live beside humans successfully.

ejb999 4y ago

>>Nature is too important to be left to the caprices of pet owners. I agree - read up on what is going on in the everglades with the explosion of huge pythons (many were former pets released into the wild) - they have already killed of something like 99% of the small mammals in the everglades, and they are not even close to containing the problem yet.

sigzero 4y ago
The isn't happening with ferrets. Ferrets have been legal in other States for many many year (over 30+ years in Virginia for example) and "feral ferrets" is not only not a problem but doesn't happen because they DIE quickly in the wild.

Supermancho 4y ago

> Feral ferrets would treat tens of species of endangered animals of California. They die at temperatures that are a sustained sub-65 degrees or sustained 100+ degrees (which you can demonstrate with a live ferret, although I wouldn't recommend it). The blackfooted ferret (endangered) is native to California. The claim that domestic sable ferrets would be invasive is ridiculous on it's face. > Nature is too important to be left to the caprices of pet owners. The CA fish and game commission is completely ideologically captured as they do not want to engage in any sort of scientific study for the non-existence of existing process (beyond a simple decree) or legal jeopardy that they may become embroiled in, after the fact. They much rather enjoy their salaries mediating the relatively safe cases of licensing and managing bureaucratic rules around existing fish and game. There's also the uncomfortable truth that people do possess ferrets in CA. Pet stores stock goods for them and vets treat them. People all around CA let their ferrets roam outside and come back in when it gets colder at night (and to get food/water). Young adult/College dorms and apartments are rife with ferret owners. Again, the claims about ferrets being a "potentially" invasive species are specious, at best.

the_watcher 4y ago
I was just thinking about the last paragraph. I honestly didn’t know they were illegal in CA, since I had so many friends that owned them growing up (inland southern CA). They bought food at the pet store, brought them in for show and tell, etc. They didn’t hide it at all.
- bragr 4y ago
  As apposed to all the other illegal things people do right out on the open?
pvaldes 4y ago
The European polecat (same species as the domestic ferret), inhabits a territory that goes from Finland to Spain. They live in western Russia and also in Morocco. They are adapted to a wide range of temperatures and climates. If you think that an animal living in Moscow can't survive temperatures below 18 Celsius, well, think again. In particular they feel pretty at home in the Mediterranean, so would survive perfectly in the Mediterranean weather of California as long as they find something to eat. There is little doubt about it. And, as is close genetically to the American polecat, and as ferrets need to breed when in heat, there is a danger of genetic contamination or displacement of the ultra-rare American polecat. I agree that most mammals will boil and turn delicious at 100 degrees

oldstrangers 4y ago

A lot of these "ferret fears" come from ignorance about what happened in New Zealand in the late 1800s / early 1900s. Domestic ferrets were crossbred with European polecats and brought to New Zealand specifically to counter rabbit overpopulation. They introduced a man made killing machine to run through rabbit populations, and unsurprisingly the hybrid ferrets did the job very well. Now they thrive on the island as an invasive species. All that said, these ferrets are genetically distinct from domesticated ferrets. They are not remotely the same thing. A domestic ferret in the US would last all of 8 minutes in the wild.

ramblerman 4y ago

Honest question, what makes you more qualified? You talk as if there is "some" desired state for nature to be in, and that you know what it is. To be clear, I have no issue with you lobbying your viewpoint, but I find it takes a bit of hubris to pretend to do it on behalf of "nature".

pvaldes 4y ago
> Honest question, what makes you more qualified? More qualified than whom?

ajford 4y ago

So can you explain how a number of escaped pet-trade ferrets can grow into a force that can threaten an ecosystem when they are unable to increase their population size?

pvaldes 4y ago
You need to think bigger. There are several ways. Eating all the remaining individuals in a local population of an endangered animal until splitting the species in two isolated areas unable to survive, would be the obvious one. For example, a professional of ecology would ask him/herself questions like "are the Parvoviruses of asymptomatic ferret pets unable to increase their population size"?