"For the last decade, wildlife biologists have been using remote camera and scat surveys to track the movements of the fox in the southern Sierra. For the last three years, they have been carrying out intensive trapping efforts. But the fox has proved stubbornly difficult to capture. The speedy and delicate species is extremely wary of humans. The few remaining individuals live in barren, rugged terrain at high elevations."
"But in January years of hard work finally paid off when biologists from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife captured a fox near Mammoth Lakes and fitted it with a GPS collar. Photos shared by the department show a silvery gray fox bounding majestically across a white snowy plain beneath towering, sunlit alpine peaks. Julia Lawson, an environmental scientist with the department, said in a statement that her team was thrilled to reach this milestone."
Fewer than 50 Sierra Nevada red foxes are believed to remain. For the first time a Sierra Nevada red fox was fitted with a GPS collar and released back into the region to enable study of movement patterns and reproductive behavior and guide conservation actions. The species' presence in the Sierra Nevada was only confirmed in 2010 by a motion camera north of Yosemite after being presumed extirpated since the 1920s. Biologists used remote camera and scat surveys for a decade and carried out intensive trapping over three years. The fox is fast, delicate, very wary of humans, and occupies barren, rugged, high-elevation terrain; capture occurred near Mammoth Lakes in January.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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