Restoring Swift Foxes to Fort Belknap

[UngulateNerd92]

Leaving the parking lot of the Wyoming Game and Fish office in Laramie, where we just organized 130 live-animal traps in the beds of our trucks, I am overcome with excitement about the project ahead. I can’t stop smiling.

We are headed to Shirley Basin, Wyoming to trap swift foxes for the start of a five-year reintroduction program led by the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes of Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. Fort Belknap has partnered with Defenders, the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and World Wildlife Fund to help the swift fox return to these tribal lands.

Restoring Swift Foxes to Fort Belknap

 

[UngulateNerd92]

Here is another relevant article.

After 51 years, swift foxes return to the grasslands of Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana

After a 51-year absence, swift foxes have returned the grasslands of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana, joining other native wildlife found within these Native-owned lands. Twenty-seven swift foxes were brought to the area from Wyoming in September, marking the beginning of a five-year reintroduction program led by the Assiniboine (Nakoda) and Gros Ventre (Aaniiih) Tribes of Fort Belknap.

The swift fox—a small carnivore no bigger than a house cat—is the latest locally extinct species to be returned to Fort Belknap under the leadership of the Fort Belknap Fish and Wildlife Department.

“Along with (plains bison) buffalo and black-footed ferrets, swift foxes are now back where they belong,” said Harold “Jiggs” Main, Director of Fort Belknap Fish and Wildlife Department.

After 51 years, swift foxes return to the grasslands of Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana