Do you remember this island fox face?
This is F257–a female island fox on Santa Rosa Island. She first started wearing a radio-tracking collar (funded by FIF) last December when she was captured as a youngster.
In 2020, F257 is 18 months old and a mature female. It surprised everyone when she was caught in the exact same place she was found last year. This means she didn't disperse, or travel away, from her parents' territory.
It is typically expected that island fox pups will move away to find their own territory as they mature. Female offspring sometimes stay close to their parent's territory and that seems to be what F257 is doing.
She is looking healthy and happy in her territory adjacent to the coastline.
Friends of the Island Fox sends a "Hello" and "Thank You" to the biologists working across the Channel Islands. They are finishing up health checks and annual island fox counting. FIF is hearing good news from the field. Individual island foxes look healthy and populations appear stable.
Radio collars, like the one F257 is wearing, provide an important conservation monitoring system that provides an early alert system regarding threats to island foxes.
Your donations help to fund radio-tracking collars for island foxes.
