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Threatened Swift Fox Pulled Back from the Brink PIERRE, South Dakota, January 28, 2002 (ENS) - The swift fox, unique to the Great Plains of North America, is the smallest and least known of the North American wild dogs (Canidae), a family that includes wolves, coyotes, and foxes. Named for its speediness, the swift fox is one of the smallest foxes in the world. It weighs an average of five pounds and measures 12 inches in height and 31 inches in length. The swift fox feeds on ground squirrels and other small mammals, grasshoppers, and berries. Conversion of native prairie for agriculture and grazing, as well as trapping and poisoning targeted at wolves and coyotes have led directly to the decline of the swift fox. These tiny foxes have starved as food sources like prairie dogs and ground squirrels were lost to federal eradication campaigns. Eliminated from 90 percent of their historic U.S. range across Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming, a few swift foxes remain in wild populations scattered in isolated pockets of short grass and mid-grass prairies in Colorado and Wyoming. The Turner Endangered Species Fund (TESF) has undertaken the reintroduction of swift foxes to the western plains of South Dakota where it has been placed on the state list of threatened species.
CNN founder Ted Turner and his family launched the nonprofit charitable fund in June 1997 to conserve biodiversity by ensuring the persistence of imperiled species and their habitats. The organization says that conserving large areas of intact, native grasslands capable of supporting healthy populations of swift foxes may at the same time provide an umbrella of protection for many other species requiring less space. "Restoring swift fox is part of restoring native biodiversity to North America?s Great Plains," the organization says. Late last year, the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish, and Parks granted the TESF the required permit to reintroduce swift foxes. Now the project awaits a permit from the South Dakota Animal Industry Board which is expected to consider the application at its next meeting in Pierre, South Dakota in early February. Once the project is fully permitted by the state, swift foxes will be released onto Turner's Bad River Ranch under the direction of conservation biologist Kyran Kunkel, who is assistant professor of wildlife ecology in the Department of Biology and Wildlife, University of Alaska, Kunkel and his team plan to import swift foxes from Wyoming because trapping in South Dakota would likely reduce numbers too low to sustain the existing population. But Wyoming has a large enough population to supply the 30 foxes needed each year for release into South Dakota, according to TESF. In Montana, the swift fox was declared extinct in 1969. Today it is being reintroduced in that state through a unique partnership between Defenders of Wildlife, the Blackfeet Nation and the Cochrane Ecological Institute. Defenders of Wildlife announced in August 2001 that 21 swift foxes were reintroduced on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana. With the goal of restoring a self-sustaining population of the tiny foxes, the three partners have released a total of 97 animals since the first release in 1998. The Alberta based Cochrane Ecological Institute, one of the world's only swift fox captive breeding facilities, is providing the foxes for the Montana project. The Blackfeet Fish and Wildlife Department is providing the site and assisting with the reintroduction, and Defenders of Wildlife coordinates the project and funds the release and tribal biologists to monitor the foxes. The foxes are welcomed by the community on the Blackfeet Reservation. Ira Newbreast, director of the Blackfeet Fish and Wildlife Department, says, "The swift fox, "Senopah," has great meaning for the Blackfeet people. We are excited to be restoring him to our home."
"It is very encouraging to know that these small foxes will once again roam the prairies where they belong," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. "The recovery of rare species nationwide depends on innovative partnerships such as this." Cochrane Ecological Institute's Swift Fox Reintroduction programs began in 1972 under the direction of Beryl and Miles Smeeton with a program to restore the swift fox to the Canadian prairies. Swift foxes disappeared entirely from Canada in the early 1900s. 0ver 800 swift foxes were reintroduced to the Canadian prairie by the Smeetons in the last 15 years. The foxes have established a small population of 150 to 200 in the southern prairies of Alberta and Saskatchewan. This has resulted in the species being downlisted by the Canadian government from extirpated to endangered. In 1998, the institute was invited by the Blackfeet Fish and Game Branch of Browning, Montana to begin an introduction project on the Blackfeet Reserve. The first Swift Fox in were released on this program in 1998. The swift foxes introduced to date in Montana have produced litters every year, and tracking data from radio collared foxes shows they are surviving in the wild. "We seem to be on track toward restoring the swift fox to the area," said Minette Johnson, program associate for Defenders. "People have been able to enjoy watching them throughout the Blackfeet reservation as well as further south." Reintroduction of the swift fox to Montana is possible due to the support of a number of philanthropic foundations, including the Bradley Fund for the Environment of the Sand County Foundation, the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund, the Liz Claiborne and Art Ortenberg Foundation, the Shared Earth Foundation, and the Fanwood Foundation. Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All rights reserved. |
Swift fox (Vulpes velox) (Photo by Lu
Carbyn courtesy TESF)
This swift fox cub was born in 1999 of
swift foxes released on the Blackfeet Reserve in 1998. (Photo
courtesy Courtesy Cochrane Ecological Institute)