Cloned black-footed ferret gives birth in ‘major milestone’ for conservationists

A cloned black-footed ferret has given birth, becoming the first-ever cloned animal of an endangered species in the US to successfully produce offspring in what officials recently hailed as a “major milestone”.

In an announcement at the beginning of November, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) said that a cloned black-footed ferret named Antonia had given birth to three kits in June after mating with a three-year-old male black-footed ferret at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) in Front Royal, Virginia.

One of the kits passed away shortly after birth – but the other two, a male named Red Cloud and his sister, Sibert, are in good health and meeting developmental milestones, according to the NZCBI.

“This marks the first time a cloned US endangered species has produced offspring, showcasing a critical step forward in using cloning to enhance genetic diversity in conservation efforts,” the FWS said in a statement.

Antonia’s becoming a parent resulted from a collaboration among the FWS and partners including the biotechnology company Revive & Restore as well as the Smithsonian, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, ViaGen Pets & Equine, and the Association of Zoos & Aquariums.

Paul Marinari, a senior curator at the NZCBI, described the breeding of Antonia and the subsequent births as a “major milestone in endangered species conservation”.

As of now, Antonia and her offspring will remain at the NZCBI for further research, and there are no current plans to release them into the wild.

Black-footed ferrets are one of North America’s most endangered mammals, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Habitat loss and disease are contributing factors to that.

According to the WWF, there are only around 370 black-footed ferrets in the wild.

Though they were once thought to be extinct, the species was rediscovered in Wyoming in 1981, the WWF has said. Since then, conservationists have mounted concerted efforts to give black-footed ferrets a fighting chance for survival.

According its website, Revive & Restore and its partners have worked for more than a decade to restore genetic diversity in black-footed ferrets through strategic conservation cloning.

Antonia was born in May of 2023 at the NZCBI. She was cloned from tissue samples collected in 1988 from a black-footed ferret named Willa, whose genetic material was preserved at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Frozen Zoo, the institute said.

Willa’s genes contained “three times the genetic diversity seen in the current population of black-footed ferrets all of which (except the three clones and new offspring) are descended from just seven surviving individuals”, the FWS added.

The introduction of these previously unrepresented genes could play a key role in increasing the species’ genetic diversity, the agency added, which, they said, is “vital to healthy, long-term recovery” for the animal.

The co-founder and executive director of Revive & Restore, Ryan Phelan, said that his group’s project marked the first time “we can definitively say that cloning contributed meaningful genetic variation back into a breeding population”.

To date, Revive & Restore’s program has produced three clones of Willa, though Phelan – like Marinari – singled out Antonia as “a major milestone”.

“The many partners in the black-footed ferret recovery program continue their innovative and inspirational efforts to save this species and be a model for other conservation programs across the globe,” Phelan added.