AUGUST 12, 2016
by Chuck Bednar
Three once-threatened groups of
foxes residing on an island off the Southern California coast have made history
as the fastest creatures to recover from the US Endangered Species List,
officials announced on Thursday.
In a statement, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, confirmed that the San
Miguel, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz Island fox subspecies had been removed from
the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife, just 12 years after their
declining numbers first earned them a place on the register.
US Interior Secretary Sally
Jewell called their recovery “an incredible success story,” as well as “a model
for partnership-driven conservation efforts across the country.” A fourth
subspecies of fox, the Santa Catalina Island fox, was also down listed from
endangered to threatened.
“The remarkably rapid recovery of
the island fox shows the power of partnership, focus, and science,” added Scott
Morrison, Director of Conservation Science at The Nature Conservancy. “Many
aspects of this recovery effort – from its scientific rigor to the
collaborative enterprise that drove it – can serve as model to advance
conservation elsewhere.”
Mammals had been given a 50
percent chance of extinction by 2010
According to Reuters and the Washington Post, the diminutive foxes have called the
Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California home for several thousand
years, but during the 19th century, their numbers started to decline when
settlers brought livestock to the islands.
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