Salem, Ore. – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has declined to list the Sierra Nevada red fox under the Endangered Species Act due in part to research conducted in Oregon showing a significant extension of its range.
They made the announcement yesterday.
An ongoing study of the Sierra Nevada fed fox (SNRF) has confirmed their presence in the Oregon Cascades, specifically in the Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Washington, and Three Sisters Wilderness Areas. Additional samples from this ongoing study are being collected in the original study area and also throughout the Oregon Cascades including Mt. Hood National Forest and Crater Lake National Park.
Due to the finding, this fox has been added as a Strategy Species in the 2015 draft update of the Oregon Conservation Strategy. Strategy Species include those with small, declining or unknown population levels that could be at risk and may be in need of conservation. The USFWS did find that a small population of the fox north of Yosemite National Park is warranted-but-precluded from ESA listing by higher current priorities.
The study started as part of a forest carnivore survey by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Working with the U.S. Forest Service, researchers set up bait, hair snares and cameras in a study from 2012 to 2014.
Remote cameras captured images of the presumably rare fox which was originally thought to be the Cascades red fox that exists in Washington. Oregon also has the Rocky Mountain red fox in the northeastern part of the state and non-native lowland red foxes in much of the state.
More than 700 photographs of Sierra Nevada red fox were taken over the two-year project, and they were found at 11 of 41 bait stations throughout the Cascades study area.
“Our cameras detected red foxes at high elevations throughout the study area, which occasionally included areas with high human activity such as ski resorts,” said Jamie McFadden-Hiller who led the field work. Tim Hiller, now with Mississippi State University, who leads the overall project that he started when he was a researcher with ODFW, said hair and scat samples from the 2012 to 2014 study were analyzed at the UC Davis laboratory and the project is moving into the next phase to collect more data.
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