Here's my response back to the site where a poster had queried about
seeing a feral ferret near a Plover reserve in coastal CA.


Dear all concerned,

As a retired professional wildlife biologist who has visited every
possible life zone in California over the last 50 years, I must say,
I am continually amazed by people who turn in "sightings" of feral
domestic ferrets.

Make no mistake, there has never been any documented discovery of
a feral population of the domestic ferret in CA, nor any other
continental state in the U.S. This was shown in a survey conducted by
the California Dept of Fish and Game a number of years ago under the
auspices of then Senior Biologist Ron Jurek.

Do domestic ferrets escape their owners? Certainly. But it is a huge
step from escaping to surviving long enough to establish a viable feral
population and one that has so far been insurmountable to the domestic
ferret, which, by the way, has been inside California since at least
the 1840's. You see, unlike the domestic cat (or dog or goat or pig),
which can cooexist with others in a shared niche, the domestic ferret
would first have to displace one of its cousins (Long-tailed Weasel,
American Mink etal) to establish itself as an successful predator.
Given the domesticity of the ferret in question and the loss of hunting
skills that it has suffered over the 3000 plus years that it has been
domesticated, statistically it is highly improbable that the necessary
circumstances could occur to allow such a feral population to develop.

Thanks for this chance to comment,

Putorius

[Posted in FML 6402]