Adopt a bald eagle or California sea lion.
Visit
the Smithsonian's American Indian Museum.
Get kids' activities on black-footed ferrets, river otters, prairie dogs and other North American wildlife.
With its rivers and waterfalls, lakes and wetlands, springs,
geysers, and caves, all rimmed with rocky seacoasts,
sandy beaches, corals, and deltas, North America's 5.8 billion acres
boast an amazing abundance
and diversity of wildlife and wild lands. Unfortunately, many of
them—like the black-footed ferret,
its prairie dog prey, and their grassland habitat—are highly endangered.
The National Zoo—the nation's zoo—exhibits many North American species. Coming to visit? 
See this update about Beaver Valley.
Live the life of a wild wolf in Yellowstone—play WolfQuest.
Black-footed Ferrets Move West
The National Zoo's Conservation and Research Center (CRC), in Front Royal, Virginia, has been breeding endangered black-footed ferrets for 20 years to bring them back from the brink of extinction.
In mid-October, all 39 kits born at CRC earlier this year were moved to Colorado. Some went to breeding facilities, and others went to a sort of "boot camp," where they will be preconditioned for release into the wild later this year. Those at boot camp will inhabit burrows dug by prairie dogs and live in their preconditioning pens for at least a month, learning how to survive in the wild. Afterwards, they will be released onto sites in New Mexico or Mexico. Of the six kits featured on the web cam this year, one female (Aqua) went to a breeding facility, and the other five—males Indigo, Cobalt, and Navy, and females Sky and Sapphire—are destined for release into the wild.
In other ferret news: In early October, the Toronto Zoo released 34 ferrets in a Canadian national park near the U.S. border. This is the first time in more than 70 years that ferrets have lived in the wild in Canada.
Record Number in 2009
In 2008, 21 ferrets were bred at CRC, and several gave birth to litters. One kit was born on our 
web cam last June! The kit was the result of artificial insemination.
This year, Zoo scientists artificially inseminated five ferrets at CRC. Thirteen other females bred naturally. Two ferrets that had been artificially inseminated and nine that bred naturally gave birth in late May and June. All told, we had 39 kits that survived. This is a record number of surviving ferret kits for the Zoo.
About Genetic Diversity
All of the semen the scientists used was collected from ferrets in the 1980s and 1990s, frozen, and stored in the Zoo’s Black-Footed Ferret Genome Resource Bank, a repository of frozen semen from the most valuable males.
In species that have short life spans like the black-footed ferret, the use of cryopreserved, or frozen, sperm extends an individual’s reproductive life. The bank’s contents help maintain and even enhance genetic diversity by infusing new genes into the population. A genetically healthy and diverse population has a greater chance of survival in the wild. The bank also serves as insurance against catastrophes in the wild populations, such as a disease outbreak. Successful inseminations with frozen semen are extremely rare—very few black-footed ferret kits have been born from this method.
Visitors to the Zoo can see a black-footed ferret in the Zoo's Small Mammal House.
Learn more about black-footed ferret conservation.
North America Photo Gallery |
Help with cam
Can’t see any animals?
The animal(s) in this enclosure may have moved out of view.
Watching a black-footed ferret:
You are viewing the nest box of a black-footed ferret at the Zoo's Conservation and Research Center, where ferrets are bred to be saved from extinction. Her name is Thalia, and she was born in 2009. The ferret kits featured on the cam earlier this year—males Indigo, Cobalt, Navy and females Sky, Sapphire, and Aqua—have been moved West (see the update above). Ferrets, which once ranged across the Great Plains and are now one of the world's rarest mammals, are more active at night—don't be surprised if the ferret on camera is asleep.
Recovery of the endangered black-footed ferret | 
Black-footed ferret facts
Flamingo Cam
Octopus Cam
Sam
and Tioga are the Stars of the Bald Eagle Refuge
A cooperative effort by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and the National Zoo led to the creation of the Bald Eagle Refuge in the Zoo's Beaver Valley. Bald eagles in the lower 48 states nearly went extinct in the mid-20th century. In the 1960s and '70s, they were given protection under endangered species laws. Thanks to the ban on certain pesticides, protected habitats, and hand-rearing and releasing eagles into the wild, they now number more than 10,000 and are no longer considered endangered.
Come visit these majestic birds
in their open-air Zoo habitat and find out more about their incredible comeback after being
on the endangered species list. 
Saving
Our Symbol
