"The workshop was so successful that participants are already asking to attend other Arizona Game and Fish Department Heritage-funded workshops on other wildlife species," said Frosty Taylor, the department's Heritage information coordinator.

As participants gathered in Seligman in late March, they anxiously awaited seeing the rare species pop their heads out of burrows. Spotlighting for the nocturnal endangered species in the moonlight in the Gunnison's prairie dog fields was the highlight of the two-day workshop where participants learned about the native mammals, and helped with field work at the reintroduction site.

The educational adventure started on a Friday evening as the participants gathered for a brief orientation session.

Saturday morning they attended a class, where they learned the historical and biological story of one of North America's most endangered species. Black-footed ferrets disappeared from Arizona's wilderness over 60 years ago because of disease and governmental poisoning programs that wiped out prairie dog colonies - the wild ferret's primary food supply.

Listed as endangered in 1956, biologists thought they were extinct in the mid-1970s. In 1981, the discovery of a small group of black-footed ferrets in Meeteetse, Wyoming, offered a ray of hope for the species. However, in 1985 outbreaks of canine distemper and sylvatic plague killed most of the Meeteetse ferret population.

To save the species, the last 18 ferrets were trapped and moved to a breeding facility in Sybille, Wyoming, which became the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center. Those ferrets started the long road back to recovery.

The dramatic recent history of the black-footed ferret was all part of the workshop. Saturday afternoon the attendees rolled up their sleeves and helped dig holes for nest boxes that will be used this spring as kits are born. Nest boxes are placed below ground level in the breeding pens to protect the kits from the summer heat. Some 63 kits were born at the Arizona reintroduction site last June.

Excitement filled the air as a few of the more curious black-footed ferrets popped their masked faces out of their burrows to see what was going on as the digging took place.

But Saturday night was the event everyone was waiting for - the opportunity to see the emerald green eyes of the furry little creatures as they pop their heads out of the burrows.

They are rarely seen during daylight hours, but they scatter and play beneath the crisp bright stars. However, the slightest noise or movement sends them scampering back into their burrows. So, it's a rare treat indeed to see the emerald eyes glow.

Black-footed ferrets, one of the rarest mammals of North America, were reintroduced in March 1996, when 65 ferrets were placed in acclimation pens in Aubrey Valley, marking the first time on-site preconditioning was used in the national ferret recovery program. The Seligman site was chosen because of its habitat and plentiful food source - the Gunnison's prairie dog.