HOT SPRINGS - Wind Cave National Park officials are celebrating the release this week of seven endangered black-footed ferrets into the 28,000-acre federal preserve.

"It's been thirty years since the last sighting of a black-footed ferret in Wind Cave National Park," acting park superintendent Rick Mossman said in a prepared statement. "We hope this is the start of a self-sustaining population that will restore a missing link to our mixed-grass ecosystem."

But ranchers who live near Wind Cave fear that the return of the ferrets could bring a tangle of federal restrictions if the ferrets migrate to adjoining private land. Leonard Wood, who ranches west of the park, said Thursday that he was surprised to learn that ferrets had already been released in Wind Cave.

"We thought we had them shut down on that until they did some more work on their impact study," Wood said. "But I guess they're going to do what they're going to do."

Like other ranchers, Wood worries that black-footed ferrets will leave park land and end up on private ranches or even subdivisions nearby, bringing with them headaches for private-property owners.

Park officials say the ferrets are being reintroduced in the park through an experimental permit issued under the federal Endangered Species Act that will prevent those problems. That permit includes mechanisms to assure that private-property interests outside the park won't be affected by the ferrets, official say.

Wood is unconvinced.

"I have nothing against ferrets. Anything that eats prairie dogs can't be all bad," he said. "But what happens when that ferret gets outside the park? They say it's not going to happen, but it will. And that's still an endangered species."

U.S. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., criticized the Wind Cave announcement Thursday as a "recipe for a disastrous reintroduction." Thune said the reintroduction went against the sentiments of local ranchers and involves a limited-scale prairie-dog landscape within the park that might not work well as a ferret reintroduction site.

"I am shocked that the Department of Interior has proceeded with this particular black-footed ferret release," Thune said.

Thune said the only good news was that federal officials has have said that inadvertent killing of ferrets by private landowners, in conjunction with activities such as private-land prairie-dog control, would be permissible. Federal officials also have said they would retrieve ferrets that migrate onto private land if the landowner requests it.

Still, Thune said, there are better places to reintroduce ferrets, with less potential impact on the surrounding community.

The ferret release follows the completion of an environmental assessment that calls for the release of 20 to 25 black-footed ferrets in the park each year for the next three to five years. The ferrets, which eat prairie dogs, will fit in with the prairie-dog management plan in the park, parks officials say.

The seven ferrets released in the park Wednesday were captured in the Conata Basin near Wall and transported to Wind Cave.

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com