Documentation of the Black-Footed Ferret, <i>Mustela nigripes</i> on the Standing Rock\nIndian Reservation, Mobridge, South Dakota
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Since 1991, 19 specific black-footed ferret reintroduction projects have been conducted across 8 States, Canada, and Mexico. All five of the first ferret reintroductions (from 1991 to 1996) continue to be occupied by ferrets. The photographs of October 31 and November 1 are the first unequivocal documentation of black-footed ferrets on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Ferrets observed on Standing Rock may be dispersals from the nearby Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation to the south. The nearest re-introduction site for ferrets is approximately 20 miles away, in Whitehorse, South Dakota, and the observation of ferrets on Standing Rock could document ferrets dispersing from that reintroduction site. The dispersal ability of ferrets is poorly known, but black-footed ferrets will travel up to 11 miles (17 km) to seek prey (Forrest, et al 1985), which certainly suggests that dispersal from Cheyenne River is possible.\nThis documentation of black-footed ferrets on Standing Rock Indian Reservation warrants further efforts to develop plans to protect, conserve, and manage this rare species, which is currently under assault from habitat loss, disease, poisoning, and human encroachment. The Tribe is committed to a sustained effort to locate potentially isolated, extant populations of ferrets within their thousands of acres of prairie dog towns, the vast majority of which remains unsurveyed. Future management efforts must include not only necessary biological studies relating to the ferret presence, but also genetic testing to determine if located animals are part of reintroduction or relict populations. Finally, black-footed ferret management must also include plans to mitigate the effect of diseases that are afflicting ferret populations and their prey-base at this time.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".