Monitoring island fox survival is vital to protecting the vulnerable and small populations on six separate Channel Islands. (Current island fox status)
Checking for the individual radio signals from 50–60 individual island foxes across an entire island every two weeks, can require many staff hours. Reducing staffing hours would make island-fox monitoring less expensive?
Enter a new technology referred to as "Digipeater." The collar pictured above is one of the 10 new Digipeater radio collars funded by FIF and fitted on Santa Cruz Island foxes this summer. While the collar size is similar to VHF radio-tracking collars, the new collars weigh slightly less and have an additional ability: they interact with stationary digital repeating antennae in the field.
Multiple times a day, receivers on the antenna scan for fox-collar signals. When a signal is picked up, it's relayed from one antennae to another until it reaches a base station. The base station transmits information directly to biologists. A biologist doesn't have to be in the field to know that all collared island foxes are active and well.
If an island fox goes for a number of days without being picked up by the automated system, biologists can go into the field looking for the signal from that specific fox.
The U.S. Navy on San Clement Island has been using Digipeaters for several years. Last summer during a wildfire that burned across a third of the island, biologists were restricted from going into the field. As the low-burning wildfire spread, the Digipeaters continued to collect status information on island foxes. From a safe location biologists could detect island fox activity and survival. No collared island foxes died in the wildfire.
This Santa Cruz Island fox was fitted with a "Digipeater" collar in July. Her new collar reports in daily and requires less in-person labor. It's a win-win for monitoring island foxes.
These collars are possible, because of donors like you.
Digipeater collars are $350 each and are made locally in Southern California.
