Modernisation threatens wildlife, so we need to evolve some novel ways to save it too. Recently, the U.S. government planned to use drones that could spread candy---full of vaccines!
These specialised drones are ferreting out endangered ferrets. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has declared that it is planning to test a program using "unmanned aerial systems" (UAS) to shoot vaccine-covered candy into the black-footed ferret's habitat in Montana.
The vaccine bait would be "M&Ms smeared in vaccine-laden peanut butter."
The drones can help to simultaneously shoot the candies in three directions, says the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The department is helping to immunise the animals against sylvatic plague.
"If the equipment can be developed to deposit 3 SPV [sylvatic plague vaccination] doses simultaneously every second, as we envision is possible, some 200 acres per hour could be treated by a single operator," the Fish and Wildlife Service said.
The vaccination will indirectly help the ferrets by aiming to save prairie dog populations too. This species is instrumental in providing ferrets with food and shelter. The ferrets are predators of prairie dogs, which are then evicted from underground burrows in order to get shelter from the weather as well as safety from predators above the ground.
Considered to be endangered since 1967, there are just 300 known black-footed ferrets living in the United States, and "plague is a primary obstacle to black-footed ferret recovery," says the environmental assessment.
"Operational use of SPV in support of ferret recovery will require annual treatments across many thousands of acres of prairie dog complexes on each of more than a dozen ferret reintroduction sites distributed from Canada to Mexico," the agency said. "The time and labor force required for such treatments by hand on foot would be very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve and sustain over long periods of time."
