Improbable Publicity for ferrets and prairie dogs

With apologies to Dave Barry...
I am not making this-up. In my usual pile of e-mails this morning I had one from one of ADLA's Prairie Dog Coalition partners, Jarid Manos of the Great Plains Restoration Council. It contained a cryptic message about a bodice ripping romance novel, plagiarism and black-footed ferrets. I admit it; I bit. I assume you will, too. http://www.newsweek.com/id/94543

This is as good as it gets for our issues. In addition to the juicy stuff (that I'll get to in a minute), writer Paul Tolme shows innovation, optimism and a sense of humor by using the fact that his work was plagiarized to write a Newsweek story in which he shares a bit about the plight of ferrets and prairie dogs.

He notes that black-footed ferrets have been listed as an endangered species. They are being reintroduced in states where they once lived, but there's a big problem. Their favorite food, black-tailed prairie dogs, is not as plentiful as it used to be and prairie dogs are still being poisoned- even on federal land.

As an aside, I should tell you that prairie dogs are incredibly cool animals in their own right. Arizona was once home to black-tailed prairie dogs, but we killed them off with poison decades ago. Arizona does have Gunnison's prairie dogs up north, and we hope some day black-tailed prairie dogs will be reintroduced in southeastern Arizona. Please visit the ADLA and Prairie Dog Coalition websites to learn why prairie dogs are so important. http://adlaz.org/
http://prairiedogcoalition.org/

Back to the juicy part. Mr. Tolme is a free-lance writer. In 2005, he went to the Conata Basin in South Dakota to write a story about ferrets for Defenders magazine. His story ran, and three years later much of it reappeared in Shadow Bear, the novel I mentioned earlier. The quotes that Mr. Tolme got from ferret expert Travis Livieri were now dialogue from the title character during some steamy moments in the novel. Instead of lawyering-up, Mr. Tolme wrote a story for Newsweek, and in the process took us all to school on how to get-out our messages.

I just heard from Jonathan Proctor of Defenders of Wildlife (another Prairie Dog Coalition partner) that the group that ferreted-out the Shadow Bear story is now putting information about these critters on their website http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/. Apparently, in the process, they are trying to raise awareness and money. If you had put this story in a novel, your editor would say "That's too far fetched. No one will believe it." But these are the opportunities for animal protection that we always have to be looking for. Who says we don't have a sense of humor? Who says being an animal advocate can't be fun?

Stephanie Nichols-Young