We’re on a National Park Service boat, headed from Ventura to the Channel Islands. It’s a trip that many of the researchers on this boat thought wouldn’t happen for at least another decade.
Three subspecies of the once endangered Island Fox are being removed from the endangered species list, in what’s being called the fastest ever recovery of a mammal. In the 1990’s, the fox was teetering on the edge of extinction.
Tim Coonan is a now retired National Park Service biologist who worked on efforts to save the endangered island fox for more than two decades. He says there were just a handful of the foxes left on San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands, as well as Santa Cruz Island, where we are headed this morning.
The Island Fox is the size of a house cat, and only weigh about four pounds, with cinnamon-gray fury, and brown eyes. They eat berries, plants, and sometimes mice, and have no natural predators in the islands. So, why were they disappearing? Scott Morrison is the Director of Science Programs for the California Chapter of the Nature Conservancy, which joined with the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to try to figure out what was happening to the fox. He says the cause turned out to be complex.
It’s a textbook case of a domino effect of humans disrupting the environment. For decades, the toxic chemical DDT was dumped in the ocean off of Southern California, where it was absorbed by fish. Bald eagles ate the fish, causing them to lay eggs with shells so thin when the birds tried to nest, they cracked, decimating the population. The few remaining birds were rounded up by biologists for a captive breeding program. Non-native golden eagles then starting moving into the islands. While bald eagles left the island foxes alone, Golden Eagles loved to eat island foxes, which were defenseless against the new predators. At the same time, the Golden Eagles feasted on thousands of non-native pigs brought to the islands by people. Once biologists figured all this out, they embarked on an ambitious plan.
Dave Garcelon, with the Institute for Wildlife Studies, is another of the researches involved in the rescue effort for decades. He says the steps included rounding up the few surviving foxes for a captive breeding program, and getting the foxes on the endangered species list. The thousands of feral pigs were eliminated. The golden eagles were then captured, and relocated. And, bald eagles were reintroduced to the islands, which insured the Golden Eagles wouldn’t return. Once the golden eagles were gone, island foxes were re-introduced. It all worked. Longtime National Park Service biologist Tim Coonan says the populations of the three island fox subspecies have bounced back, with the numbers going from less than a hundred to more than 3,000.
So Thursday morning, researchers involved with the recovery effort, along with some of the nation’s top conservation officials gathered on Santa Cruz Island to celebrate the official removal of three island fox subspecies from the endangered species list. National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis, who was on hand for the event, says the delisting shows we can step up to stop, and even reverse man-made damage to the environment. He says what made the project work was the involvement of both public and non-profit groups all with the same objective of saving the island fox.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Director Dan Ashe called it a real cause for celebration to get some animals off the endangered species list.
But, longtime biologist Tim Coonan says humans can’t take all the credit. He says the foxes helped their own cause, breeding well in captivity and in then in the wild, after they were re-introduced.
While the Island Fox has made a remarkable comeback, the project is far from over. Biologists say they will continue to track the populations on the islands for at least another decade to insure they remain stable.
