Questions for discussion

• Would you have advised removing all individuals from the wild in 1986 to establish a captive breeding program? Under what circumstancew would you advise removing all individuals of a threatened species from the wild? Under what circumstances would you advise that we allow the threatened species to go extinct?

• How do you think those involved decided on the objective of maintaining 90% of heterozygosity for 50 years in the captive breeding program? Does that seem like a reasonable objective? Would you have picked something different? Why were those involved concerned about ``managing'' the representation of founders in the captive population instead of simply trying to increase its size as rapidly as possible? How do you think they identified ``genetically surplus'' individuals?

• What threats currently face black-footed ferrets? How would you go about assessing their relative importance?