by The animals living in the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute are associated with one thing with 32,000 acres in North Virginia: the risk of extinction.
Hidden in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, more than 20 species with the risk of dying, including Mongolia, Przewalski’s The horse, which disappeared from the wilderness at the end of the 1960s, lives on the site of the institute. There are red pandas, wolves and cloudy leopards to name a few more.
The institute examines reproduction, ecology, genetics, migration and sustainability of the species with the ultimate goals to save wild animals from extinction and to train future conservation. In certain cases, the scientists are responsible for breeding and introduce them to their habitats again.
But those who work to maintain these types and remove them from the list of endangered species still deal with the speed with the species disappear.
“We see species that disappear at 10, 100 to 1000 times as far as the normal background rate,” Melissa Songer Melissa Songer from SCBI told CBS News.
The International Union for Nature Conservation warned in early 2025 that 28%or more than 47,000 of the estimated species of the world were threatened from extinction. This number includes more than just animal species, with decisive insects, plant and tree species are also threatened.
“So we think, okay, now, we lose the species here and there, you know there are many other species,” says Songer, “but the thing is that when we lose a kind of cascading effects.”
A good example of this effect is the black and foot ferret, which originally lived in the North American Great Plains, but has been at risk since 1967.
While the species remains on the list threatened by extinction, its population has grown at the institute since the start of maintenance efforts.
“Every animal in the ecosystem is important for this ecosystem,” says Adrienne Crosier, a cheetah biologist at SCBI, “everyone has a really important role.”
When it comes to the black and foot ferret, Crosier says that it is “a mixture of predator and prey for other larger carnivore”, which means that other animals without food source remain in the absence of the ferret.
“Every time you completely remove a species from the ecosystem, you cause an imbalance in this ecosystem,” says Crosier.
Crosier’s team is currently taking care of around 60 ferret kits that are released into Colorado wildly in autumn.
“Whenever we have born offspring, I have the feeling that we did our job,” says Crosier with a smile.
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