Cloning Boosts Endangered Black Footed Ferrets

Isadora Schmidt

Current Event 5

Citations: 

Hulick, Kathryn. “Cloning Boosts Endangered Black Footed Ferrets.” Science News, September 23, 2021. 

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/cloning-boosts-endangered-black-footed-ferrets

For this Current Events Review I decided to read an article called, “Cloning Boosts Endangered Black Footed Ferrets” by Kathryn Hulick, the main idea of this article is to show the reader how cloning can help save thousands of endangered or even extinct species. The article starts out talking about a black footed ferret named Elizabeth-Ann who was just born in December of 2020 and who is a part of one of the most endangered animals in North America. But this ferret is very different from any other ferret, she’s a genetic copy of a black footed ferret who actually died decades ago. The article then goes on to say how there used to be millions of black footed ferrets roaming around in North America but Europeans started to come and colonize their homes. The species suffered many horrible things like the article says, “When European settlers moved to the area and built farms, they destroyed these animals’ habitats. They also poisoned and killed prairie dogs, leaving many black-footed ferrets without food. In 1979, experts declared the black-footed ferret extinct.” (Hulick). This statement was very sad to hear but the tears wouldn’t last for long because in 1981 a farmer named Oliver Ryder discovered a small community of black footed ferrets living on the edge of his farm. This news was exciting, wild conservationists came and took the ferrets and began a captive breeding program to help save the species. But before we move on, Ryder asked the conservationists for cell samples of each of the ferrets they found and pieces of skin were given to him, and preserved in a way that the cells could revive and grow. He specifically remembered saying, “It will be useful for reasons we don’t know.” (Hulick). Next, we see how the scientists rebuilt the population of the black footed ferret. There was a plague going around that could easily kill the ferrets but the scientists quickly developed a vaccine for the plague so they were able to save many of the ferrets and even get some more from breeding the animals. The problem though, was that each offspring was very closely related and with each new generation, the ferrets would have more genetic problems; they needed more diversity or soon the species would truly become extinct. That is why Elizabeth-Ann was created, to have more diversity in the population, she is a clone of Willa whose genes were preserved in 1986 by Ryder and had no living descendants before 2020. “Elizabeth Ann’s birth was “‘a leap of hope’” for the species, says Kimberly Fraser, an education specialist at the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center in Wellington, Colo.” (Hulick). The article then tells the reader about the process of cloning, which is when scientists removed the entire nucleus from Willa’s skin cell and the nucleus from an egg cell from a different type of ferret, they then transferred Willa’s nucleus into these cells which made the egg cell divide into embryos. They finally put those embryos into a different ferret who would carry the babies, Elizabeth-Ann was the only embryo to survive this process. This showed the scientists that it’s become possible for DNA from a dead animal to live again, which could lead to rebirthing an entire species. 

Finding out that scientists are able to create genetic copies of animals that died many many years ago and create a new form of life based on the DNA is absolutely astonishing and amazing! With this discovery, we can help so many different species that are endangered become greatly populated again and it even could be possible to bring back extinct species just by having some of the animal’s cells which is crazy!! Although the process of cloning an animal is very precise and it takes a long time to complete, just imagine what this could do for some animals that might be the last surviving of their species, we can have animals roaming around the Earth like they used to before humans took over. That’s why we need to start preserving cells from many different species, so we can keep those cells in safe keeping and then, in a matter of crisis for a species, boost their population back up again. Wouldn’t you much rather save as many animals as you could other than slowly letting different species die out one by one?

Overall Kathryn Hulick did a pretty good job on her article, she included many different sources to clarify that the information she was getting was widespread and true, she was very descriptive in different aspects of her article and included lots of statistics, she also made her article short and to the point which can make it easier for readers to understand everything she’s saying. The weakness of her article is that Hulick didn’t use any informational quotes from her sources, the only quotes she had in her article were things the professionalists said but not any information that would help the reader in any way. For example one of the quotes she got from a professional was, “She loves getting in tubes and boxes and paper bags. I would say she’s very happy.” (Hulick). Maybe asking the professionals more insightful questions or questions that will give more information about how they were able to clone a ferret or how this clone is different from any other normal ferret would have been a better quote to include. But this article does give a great impact on the reader and leaves the reader wondering many things and in the end, the positives of this article outweigh the negatives which shows how good of a read this article is.