Channel Islands Fox

The Channel Island Fox (Urocyon littoralis) is a small fox (or rather foxes) that is (are) native to six of the Channel Islands of California, an eight-island archipelago along the Santa Barbara Channel in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Southern California.

[Image: Jessica Sanchez - Channel Island Fox]

There are six subspecies, each unique to the island it lives on, reflecting its evolutionary history. The island fox shares the genus with the mainland gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), the species from which it once descended.

[The six subspecies]

Channel Island foxes are significantly smaller than the grey fox and are the smallest foxes in North America. Typically, they measure 50 centimeters in length with a 30 centimeters long tail attached. Island foxes weigh between 1.0 and 3.0 kilograms. Their small size is a result of insular dwarfism.

“They’re definitely very clever and mischievous, but they also have a kind of fearless confidence that comes with having been a top predator for so long. They will come right up to you,” said Jessica Sanchez, a wildlife biologist, veterinarian and epidemiologist.

Sanchez has been working with the Channel Island foxes since 2006, when she joined in the efforts to repopulate the fox populations following a rapid decline which brought the species to the brink of extinction.

The foxes have no immunity to parasites and diseases brought in from the mainland and is especially vulnerable to those that the domestic dog may carry. In addition, predation by the golden eagle and human activities devastated fox numbers on several of the Channel Islands in the 1990s. In the late 1990s, the foxes were on a precipice. On Santa Catalina Island, an epidemic of canine distemper virus — likely introduced from the mainland — killed 95% of all the foxes on the island by 1999, while up north on Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel Islands, invasive golden eagles began feasting on the foxes in large numbers.

“The eagles were initially attracted to the islands because there was an abundance of livestock like pigs and goats for them to feed on. There were also open territories that were left because the native bald eagles had also been declining at the same time due to DDT,” Sanchez said.

Unfortunately for the foxes, their fearless nature and diurnal lifestyle made them easy targets. Better yet, they were the perfect size to be scooped up and brought to nests as a nutritious meal for infant chicks.

“They didn’t really have a lot of the evasive behaviours that mainland foxes have so they really suffered predation by these eagles and that just led to dramatic population declines,” Sanchez said.

The only way to save the Channel Island foxes was to remove the golden eagles (by removing their favourite food supply: pigs and goats) and to reintroduce bald eagles to the islands to occupy their former territory and drive away any wayward golden eagles that were inclined to return.

Source.