Island Foxes

in a remote spot on catalina island thirty two of california's rarest of animals live among small bush's in large enclosures veterinarian winston vickers entered one of them inside biologist from the catalina conservancy and the institute for wildlife studies are rounding up ten juvenile foxy is so they can be released back into the wild set traps to have the original font for common with we had said and so they would come in and he'd have been confined them vickers peers into one of the cages and eighty five pound fox is curled up inside its tiny with a speckled gray back entail and deep brown eyes its canine features are delicate almost can't live on fox on all the channel islands were descended from mainland gray fox appeared to reach the northern channel islands first perhaps naturally perhaps by driftwood or some other natural pathway when the islands were closer to the mainland and there is a theory that the native american

population brought into catalina like many other animals isolated on islands where food is often scares the fox is on the channel islands gradually frank and became smaller than their mainland ancestors biggers says they're great beepers a skill they use when hunting the nocturnal hunters primarily out here they live on a variety of insects lizards small mammals birds varies in different types of the fruit of the prickly pear cactus they have quite a varied diet until the late nineties there were about thirteen hundred of catalina subsidies he's an island fox canine distemper killed all but a hundred and just a couple of years it's not clear how they got it that's a disease of canines it became a group of animals and as well as some felines i'm sort of virus that that's pretty widely spread in nature it could have been introduced or a new

strain could possibly have been introduced from outside from the mainland through a dog could have been just a mutation in the virus that journey here to save the animals the catalina conservancy has vaccinated them and three years ago began greeting them in captivity they've been remarkably successful in two thousand one they weird six pots and in two thousand to they had any this year there are liquors heads to a covered part of the enclosure dave garth salon and other biologists are running radio collars on some of this six month old boxes mail from the violins to repairing these youngsters are released the next day vineyard says to get their parents to read biologist try to make sure that bonded perez were kept together and gave them privacy they removed a few fans whose mothers were interacting them in

place and with foster mothers and they were careful to make sure both parents and pops didn't become domesticated we do avoid contact with them as much as possible we would try to feed we stay out of sight so we tried to not make them comfortable with people after their collared the juvenile foxes are put to bed in pat carrying cases the next morning they're transported to a wooded canyon for release a crowd of schoolkids and others watch as biologists open the cages a few feet away biologist dave garson was also watches as the first fox looks around then bolts from the cage with or go on banning the running uphill the last the way the farthest one direction they were running their life because a cage isn't that big just use no the mileage is released nine other foxes and began radio tracking them de

barcelona hopes their success with fox's on catalina will help efforts to breathe endangered foxes on three northern channel islands fox's there are also imperiled but for different reasons eight foxes on two of the islands were released from captivity last week karzai says if all goes well biologist may be able to stop breeding catalina fox is in the next year or so they've already had one very good sign some of the foxes they released in the last two years have already reproduced in the wild on catalina island will society all at nine point three kpcc