By Vern
Photo of very rare Island Fox on the Gaviota Coast. Not much larger than a house cat.
Rare Island Fox Seen on Gaviota Coast
Anonymous
January 15, 2019, 9:00 am
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Had no idea there are Island Foxes on the mainland. Friends who have backpacked on Santa Cruz Island tell me they’ve made a nice comeback.
Agree, TAGDES. Using the patio table for size/scale reference, looks like ordinary gray fox – from which the Island Fox eventually descended. Can’t easily tell from angle, but tail markings also look like a gray.
Eating from a bowl, must be a new breed of domesticated foxes?
I suppose if you have only ever seen an island fox it’s an easy mistake to make. They look the same EXCEPT the island fox had experience island dwarfism so it MUCH smaller, like a small house cat as someone mentioned. Island foxes were decimated by the golden eagle before the eagles were shooed away by the reintroduction of the bald eagle and a captive breeding program helped to bring them back.
There has been a population of similar foxes at the top of the Refugio and Tajiguas drainages for over thirty years. They took a hard hit from parvo virus or another of the canine scourges ten to twelve years ago but seem to have rebuilt their numbers lately.
How do you know it’s not a mainland gray fox?
Once upon a time, many MANY years ago, when I was in my late teens, someone at the Museum of Natural History had an Island fox loose in his office/work space. I remember standing looking up at the small fox, which was high up atop a shelf. I reached up and the fox gently grabbed my forefinger and acted as though he wanted to pull me up onto the shelf with him. He was amazingly gentle. It was quite an experience. What happened out at the Islands with the foxes is much more complicated than simply blaming Golden eagle predation. Humans decided the Foeniculum vulgar (fennel plant) didn’t belong on The Channel Islands and set about eradicating it, using herbicides. Soon it became apparent that the Island fox thus was deprived of much of its cover. Hunting foxes became much easier for the eagles. Humans really have a talent for gumming things up.
That’s not an island fox, it’s way too big. I’ve photographed the ones above Refugio and the colors are same, but island foxes have no immunity to parasites and diseases and couldn’t sustain a population here for 30 years.
Snow Plover beware!
Definitely larger than the foxes I’ve seen on the islands.
The article’s headline needs to be corrected as it is a grey fox, not an island fox.