Six new radio collars funded by Friends of the Island Fox will arrive on Catalina Island next week!
Across the Channel Islands, island foxes are receiving annual health checks and new radio-tracking collars.
Watch the video below of M173. He is a four-year-old male on Santa Rosa Island and his radio collar was replaced last week during his health check.
He is not tranquilized. The green hood covers his eyes and keeps his mouth closed. This keeps him calm and enables biologists to quickly complete a health check, vaccinate the fox against canine distemper and rabies, and for some island foxes, deploy a new or refurbished radio collar.
This radio collar will send signals to biologists for the next 2–3 years. The signal will help locate M173 and the type of signal informs the biologist if he is moving around normally or if something might have happened to him. In the case of a mortality signal, biologists can follow the signal to find the island fox's body and determine what happened. If there is a threat to other island foxes, action can be taken quickly.
For the 2023 health check season Friends of the Island Fox has supplied:
- 5 new and 15 refurbished radio collars to Santa Cruz Island
- 24 refurbished radio collar to San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands
- 6 new radio collars to Catalina Island
Radio collars offer the best way to monitor island fox survival
in the wild.
Your donations make it all possible.