Here are the reasons I am exceedingly leery to have the ferret
community get involved with the prairie dog issue:
 
1. Too many people in influential positions already confuse ferrets with
rodents without us worsening their confusion, ditto people in influential
places who think that ferrets are wild when they aren't but prairie dogs
are.
 
2. There are a great many more shared illnesses (zoonotics) between
humans and rodents than between humans and ferrets.
 
3. Ferrets are domesticated animals with thousands of years of living
with humans but prairie dogs usually have only one to a few generations
in captivity so are tamed but wild, or sometimes just plain wild even
though living in households.  Most are caught slowly with the pain-saking
method of digging up the burrow to steal babies and those places actually
breed them (yet the generation number is still way too low to not be wild
animals) BUT the U.S.'s largest prairie dog farm instead uses a suction
device which literally pumps up the animals from burrows (Yes, some die
though they claim it is few but who knows...) and then the babies are
raised and they or their offspring are sold to the market so these are
wild animals who themselves have been removed from the wild or are the
first generation of offspring of such individuals.  (BTW, albino prairie
dogs exist in the wild though they are rare.  During an National Public
Radio interview at this large farm which was broadcast on All Things
Considered or one the weekend ATC programs and albino one was spotted
with the "farmer" saying that if he could catch that one he could get a
large sum for it.  You CAN find this interview on )
 
4.  I don't believe in removing prairie dogs from the wild where they are
needed; it is environmental decimation.
[Posted in FML issue 4198]