These unique black-footed ferrets are at the edge of extinction. Trump's cuts may well do them in.

From as many as a million ferrets in the 19th century , today there are only a few hundred of these furry predators roaming the Great Plains .

In the 1970s , scientists thought black-footed ferrets were extinct, but an unprecedented breeding effort led by the US Fish and Wildlife Service brought this critical piece of the prairie ecosystem back from the brink.

Earlier this month , as part of the Trump administration’s purge of federal employees, Tina Jackson was fired.

The Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center near Fort Collins , Colorado , has led groundbreaking efforts to clone black-footed ferrets.

The center is critical for the survival of ferrets once they’ve been released into the wild.

The bulk of funding for this work comes from the federal government, and much of that money is currently on ice.

Last year , the budget for the entire Fish and Wildlife Service was roughly $4 billion .

That’s less than 3 percent of what the Department of Transportation spends, for example.

The service is supposed to carry out a federally mandated five-year review of the black-footed ferret's conservation status soon, which Jackson was meant to lead.