2 more rare red foxes confirmed in Sierra Nevada
SCOTT SONNER
The Associated Press
RENO, Nev. -- Federal wildlife biologists have confirmed sightings of two more Sierra Nevada red foxes that once were thought to be extinct.
Scientists believe the foxes are related to another that was photographed this summer near Yosemite National Park. More importantly, they say, DNA samples show enough diversity in the Sierra Nevada red foxes to suggest a "fairly strong population" of the animals may secretly be doing quite well in the rugged mountains about 90 miles south of Reno.
The first confirmed sighting of the subspecies in two decades came in August when a remote camera captured the image of a female fox in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest near Sonora Pass.
Forest Service officials confirmed Friday that two more foxes - one male and one female - were photographed in September in the neighboring Stanislaus National Forest, about 4 miles from the original.
That indicates there is the "continued persistence of a genetically unique population of Sierra Nevada red fox in the southern Sierra Nevada, rather than a single individual," the agency said.
The DNA samples were obtained from fox feces, or scat, collected at the sites where the two most recent animals were spotted. They were caught on film by motion-activated cameras triggered when the bait - in this case, a sock full of chicken - was disturbed.
"There's enough diversity in the DNA that we think there is a fairly strong population there after not showing up in this isolated area for years and years," Forest Service wildlife biologist Diane Macfarlane said Friday.
"It shows the male individual has some relationship to that initial female. The data isn't strong enough to say if it was a mother or father or sibling, but it is some level of relationship - aunt, cousin, uncle," she told The Associated Press.
"The good news is we definitely have a male and female. We know there are breeding possibilities and there could be others," said Macfarlane, who leads the agency's regional program on threatened, endangered and sensitive species based in Vallejo, Calif.
"We anticipate getting a lot more information in the future as we begin to focus serious, additional efforts there," she said.
This particular red fox subspecies - or geographically distinct race - is one of the rarest, most elusive and least-known mammals in California and the United States, agency officials said.
Once widespread throughout California's mountains, it has become very rare in recent decades, with only a single known population of fewer than 20 individuals at the north end of the Sierra near Lassen Volcanic National Park about 100 miles northwest of Reno.
The Forest Service has expanded the survey effort in recent months in conjunction with researchers at the National Park Service, California Department of Fish and Game, UC-Davis and Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo.
Adam Rich, a wildlife biologist for the Stanislaus National Forest, worked with a team of high school volunteers to collect scat at the two new photo locations.
Macfarlane said it was a good example of how federal agencies can work in concert with other researchers to find "simple and cost effective ways to manage and monitor rare wildlife."
"We are really ramping up our survey efforts, working with universities and others, to go look for things in places where we haven't looked before," she said. "And we are finding more things as our techniques become more and more sophisticated."
"For wildlife biologists, these types of findings are the highlight of our career," she said. "I get goose bumps just talking about it."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120306326.html
Showing posts with label sierra nevada red fox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sierra nevada red fox. Show all posts
Monday, December 6, 2010
Sierra Nevada foxes (via Chad Arment)
2 more rare red foxes confirmed in Sierra Nevada
SCOTT SONNER
The Associated Press
RENO, Nev. -- Federal wildlife biologists have confirmed sightings of two more Sierra Nevada red foxes that once were thought to be extinct.
Scientists believe the foxes are related to another that was photographed this summer near Yosemite National Park. More importantly, they say, DNA samples show enough diversity in the Sierra Nevada red foxes to suggest a "fairly strong population" of the animals may secretly be doing quite well in the rugged mountains about 90 miles south of Reno.
The first confirmed sighting of the subspecies in two decades came in August when a remote camera captured the image of a female fox in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest near Sonora Pass.
Forest Service officials confirmed Friday that two more foxes - one male and one female - were photographed in September in the neighboring Stanislaus National Forest, about 4 miles from the original.
That indicates there is the "continued persistence of a genetically unique population of Sierra Nevada red fox in the southern Sierra Nevada, rather than a single individual," the agency said.
The DNA samples were obtained from fox feces, or scat, collected at the sites where the two most recent animals were spotted. They were caught on film by motion-activated cameras triggered when the bait - in this case, a sock full of chicken - was disturbed.
"There's enough diversity in the DNA that we think there is a fairly strong population there after not showing up in this isolated area for years and years," Forest Service wildlife biologist Diane Macfarlane said Friday.
"It shows the male individual has some relationship to that initial female. The data isn't strong enough to say if it was a mother or father or sibling, but it is some level of relationship - aunt, cousin, uncle," she told The Associated Press.
"The good news is we definitely have a male and female. We know there are breeding possibilities and there could be others," said Macfarlane, who leads the agency's regional program on threatened, endangered and sensitive species based in Vallejo, Calif.
"We anticipate getting a lot more information in the future as we begin to focus serious, additional efforts there," she said.
This particular red fox subspecies - or geographically distinct race - is one of the rarest, most elusive and least-known mammals in California and the United States, agency officials said.
Once widespread throughout California's mountains, it has become very rare in recent decades, with only a single known population of fewer than 20 individuals at the north end of the Sierra near Lassen Volcanic National Park about 100 miles northwest of Reno.
The Forest Service has expanded the survey effort in recent months in conjunction with researchers at the National Park Service, California Department of Fish and Game, UC-Davis and Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo.
Adam Rich, a wildlife biologist for the Stanislaus National Forest, worked with a team of high school volunteers to collect scat at the two new photo locations.
Macfarlane said it was a good example of how federal agencies can work in concert with other researchers to find "simple and cost effective ways to manage and monitor rare wildlife."
"We are really ramping up our survey efforts, working with universities and others, to go look for things in places where we haven't looked before," she said. "And we are finding more things as our techniques become more and more sophisticated."
"For wildlife biologists, these types of findings are the highlight of our career," she said. "I get goose bumps just talking about it."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120306326.html
SCOTT SONNER
The Associated Press
RENO, Nev. -- Federal wildlife biologists have confirmed sightings of two more Sierra Nevada red foxes that once were thought to be extinct.
Scientists believe the foxes are related to another that was photographed this summer near Yosemite National Park. More importantly, they say, DNA samples show enough diversity in the Sierra Nevada red foxes to suggest a "fairly strong population" of the animals may secretly be doing quite well in the rugged mountains about 90 miles south of Reno.
The first confirmed sighting of the subspecies in two decades came in August when a remote camera captured the image of a female fox in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest near Sonora Pass.
Forest Service officials confirmed Friday that two more foxes - one male and one female - were photographed in September in the neighboring Stanislaus National Forest, about 4 miles from the original.
That indicates there is the "continued persistence of a genetically unique population of Sierra Nevada red fox in the southern Sierra Nevada, rather than a single individual," the agency said.
The DNA samples were obtained from fox feces, or scat, collected at the sites where the two most recent animals were spotted. They were caught on film by motion-activated cameras triggered when the bait - in this case, a sock full of chicken - was disturbed.
"There's enough diversity in the DNA that we think there is a fairly strong population there after not showing up in this isolated area for years and years," Forest Service wildlife biologist Diane Macfarlane said Friday.
"It shows the male individual has some relationship to that initial female. The data isn't strong enough to say if it was a mother or father or sibling, but it is some level of relationship - aunt, cousin, uncle," she told The Associated Press.
"The good news is we definitely have a male and female. We know there are breeding possibilities and there could be others," said Macfarlane, who leads the agency's regional program on threatened, endangered and sensitive species based in Vallejo, Calif.
"We anticipate getting a lot more information in the future as we begin to focus serious, additional efforts there," she said.
This particular red fox subspecies - or geographically distinct race - is one of the rarest, most elusive and least-known mammals in California and the United States, agency officials said.
Once widespread throughout California's mountains, it has become very rare in recent decades, with only a single known population of fewer than 20 individuals at the north end of the Sierra near Lassen Volcanic National Park about 100 miles northwest of Reno.
The Forest Service has expanded the survey effort in recent months in conjunction with researchers at the National Park Service, California Department of Fish and Game, UC-Davis and Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo.
Adam Rich, a wildlife biologist for the Stanislaus National Forest, worked with a team of high school volunteers to collect scat at the two new photo locations.
Macfarlane said it was a good example of how federal agencies can work in concert with other researchers to find "simple and cost effective ways to manage and monitor rare wildlife."
"We are really ramping up our survey efforts, working with universities and others, to go look for things in places where we haven't looked before," she said. "And we are finding more things as our techniques become more and more sophisticated."
"For wildlife biologists, these types of findings are the highlight of our career," she said. "I get goose bumps just talking about it."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120306326.html
Friday, September 3, 2010
Fox spit helped Forest Service confirm rare find (Via Chad Arment)
Fox spit helped Forest Service confirm rare find
September 3, 2010
Three weeks ago, when U.S. Forest Service biologists thought they had found a supposedly extinct fox in the mountains of central California, they turned to UC Davis for confirmation.
Photographs taken by a Forest Service trail camera in Sonora Pass seemed to show a Sierra Nevada red fox (Vulpes vulpes necator) biting a bait bag of chicken scraps. That would be an amazing discovery, since no sighting of that species has been verified south of Mount Lassen, 200 miles away, since the mid-1990s.
The biologists shipped the bait bag to wildlife genetics researchers Ben Sacks and Mark Statham at the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory. Since 2006, they have radically altered our understanding of red foxes in California, supplying information crucial to conservation efforts.
Sacks and Statham scraped saliva from the tooth punctures on the bag and analyzed the DNA within. Before you could say spit, they had the answer: definitely a Sierra Nevada red fox.
“This is the most exciting animal discovery we have had in California since the wolverine in the Sierra two years ago -- only this time, the unexpected critter turned out to be home-grown, which is truly big news,” Sacks said. (The wolverine was an immigrant from Wyoming).
Four years ago, Sacks began analyzing California red fox DNA collected from scat, hair and saliva from live animals, and skin and bones from museum specimens. Until then, the expert consensus was that any red fox in the Central Valley and coastal regions of the state was a descendant of Eastern red foxes (V.v. fulva) brought here in the 1860's for hunting and fur farms.
Sacks and his colleagues have confirmed that red fox populations in coastal lowlands, the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California were indeed introduced from the eastern United States (and Alaska). But they have also shown that:
•There are native California red foxes still living in the Sierra Nevada.
•The native red foxes in the Sacramento Valley (V.v. patwin) are a subspecies genetically distinct from those in the Sierra.
•The two native California subspecies, along with Rocky Mountain and Cascade red foxes (V.v. macroura and V. v. cascadensis), formed a single large western population until the end of the last ice age, when the three mountain subspecies followed receding glaciers up to mountaintops, leaving the Sacramento Valley red fox isolated at low elevation.
Sacks' extensive research program focuses on canids, especially red foxes (evolution, ecology and conservation) and dogs (genetics, geographic origins and spread). He and his students also are working on other carnivores, including disease ecology and interactions among fishers, bobcats, coyotes and gray foxes, and population genetics of ringtails and coyotes.
http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=9596
September 3, 2010
Three weeks ago, when U.S. Forest Service biologists thought they had found a supposedly extinct fox in the mountains of central California, they turned to UC Davis for confirmation.
Photographs taken by a Forest Service trail camera in Sonora Pass seemed to show a Sierra Nevada red fox (Vulpes vulpes necator) biting a bait bag of chicken scraps. That would be an amazing discovery, since no sighting of that species has been verified south of Mount Lassen, 200 miles away, since the mid-1990s.
The biologists shipped the bait bag to wildlife genetics researchers Ben Sacks and Mark Statham at the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory. Since 2006, they have radically altered our understanding of red foxes in California, supplying information crucial to conservation efforts.
Sacks and Statham scraped saliva from the tooth punctures on the bag and analyzed the DNA within. Before you could say spit, they had the answer: definitely a Sierra Nevada red fox.
“This is the most exciting animal discovery we have had in California since the wolverine in the Sierra two years ago -- only this time, the unexpected critter turned out to be home-grown, which is truly big news,” Sacks said. (The wolverine was an immigrant from Wyoming).
Four years ago, Sacks began analyzing California red fox DNA collected from scat, hair and saliva from live animals, and skin and bones from museum specimens. Until then, the expert consensus was that any red fox in the Central Valley and coastal regions of the state was a descendant of Eastern red foxes (V.v. fulva) brought here in the 1860's for hunting and fur farms.
Sacks and his colleagues have confirmed that red fox populations in coastal lowlands, the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California were indeed introduced from the eastern United States (and Alaska). But they have also shown that:
•There are native California red foxes still living in the Sierra Nevada.
•The native red foxes in the Sacramento Valley (V.v. patwin) are a subspecies genetically distinct from those in the Sierra.
•The two native California subspecies, along with Rocky Mountain and Cascade red foxes (V.v. macroura and V. v. cascadensis), formed a single large western population until the end of the last ice age, when the three mountain subspecies followed receding glaciers up to mountaintops, leaving the Sacramento Valley red fox isolated at low elevation.
Sacks' extensive research program focuses on canids, especially red foxes (evolution, ecology and conservation) and dogs (genetics, geographic origins and spread). He and his students also are working on other carnivores, including disease ecology and interactions among fishers, bobcats, coyotes and gray foxes, and population genetics of ringtails and coyotes.
http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=9596
Fox spit helped Forest Service confirm rare find (Via Chad Arment)
Fox spit helped Forest Service confirm rare find
September 3, 2010
Three weeks ago, when U.S. Forest Service biologists thought they had found a supposedly extinct fox in the mountains of central California, they turned to UC Davis for confirmation.
Photographs taken by a Forest Service trail camera in Sonora Pass seemed to show a Sierra Nevada red fox (Vulpes vulpes necator) biting a bait bag of chicken scraps. That would be an amazing discovery, since no sighting of that species has been verified south of Mount Lassen, 200 miles away, since the mid-1990s.
The biologists shipped the bait bag to wildlife genetics researchers Ben Sacks and Mark Statham at the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory. Since 2006, they have radically altered our understanding of red foxes in California, supplying information crucial to conservation efforts.
Sacks and Statham scraped saliva from the tooth punctures on the bag and analyzed the DNA within. Before you could say spit, they had the answer: definitely a Sierra Nevada red fox.
“This is the most exciting animal discovery we have had in California since the wolverine in the Sierra two years ago -- only this time, the unexpected critter turned out to be home-grown, which is truly big news,” Sacks said. (The wolverine was an immigrant from Wyoming).
Four years ago, Sacks began analyzing California red fox DNA collected from scat, hair and saliva from live animals, and skin and bones from museum specimens. Until then, the expert consensus was that any red fox in the Central Valley and coastal regions of the state was a descendant of Eastern red foxes (V.v. fulva) brought here in the 1860's for hunting and fur farms.
Sacks and his colleagues have confirmed that red fox populations in coastal lowlands, the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California were indeed introduced from the eastern United States (and Alaska). But they have also shown that:
•There are native California red foxes still living in the Sierra Nevada.
•The native red foxes in the Sacramento Valley (V.v. patwin) are a subspecies genetically distinct from those in the Sierra.
•The two native California subspecies, along with Rocky Mountain and Cascade red foxes (V.v. macroura and V. v. cascadensis), formed a single large western population until the end of the last ice age, when the three mountain subspecies followed receding glaciers up to mountaintops, leaving the Sacramento Valley red fox isolated at low elevation.
Sacks' extensive research program focuses on canids, especially red foxes (evolution, ecology and conservation) and dogs (genetics, geographic origins and spread). He and his students also are working on other carnivores, including disease ecology and interactions among fishers, bobcats, coyotes and gray foxes, and population genetics of ringtails and coyotes.
http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=9596
September 3, 2010
Three weeks ago, when U.S. Forest Service biologists thought they had found a supposedly extinct fox in the mountains of central California, they turned to UC Davis for confirmation.
Photographs taken by a Forest Service trail camera in Sonora Pass seemed to show a Sierra Nevada red fox (Vulpes vulpes necator) biting a bait bag of chicken scraps. That would be an amazing discovery, since no sighting of that species has been verified south of Mount Lassen, 200 miles away, since the mid-1990s.
The biologists shipped the bait bag to wildlife genetics researchers Ben Sacks and Mark Statham at the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory. Since 2006, they have radically altered our understanding of red foxes in California, supplying information crucial to conservation efforts.
Sacks and Statham scraped saliva from the tooth punctures on the bag and analyzed the DNA within. Before you could say spit, they had the answer: definitely a Sierra Nevada red fox.
“This is the most exciting animal discovery we have had in California since the wolverine in the Sierra two years ago -- only this time, the unexpected critter turned out to be home-grown, which is truly big news,” Sacks said. (The wolverine was an immigrant from Wyoming).
Four years ago, Sacks began analyzing California red fox DNA collected from scat, hair and saliva from live animals, and skin and bones from museum specimens. Until then, the expert consensus was that any red fox in the Central Valley and coastal regions of the state was a descendant of Eastern red foxes (V.v. fulva) brought here in the 1860's for hunting and fur farms.
Sacks and his colleagues have confirmed that red fox populations in coastal lowlands, the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California were indeed introduced from the eastern United States (and Alaska). But they have also shown that:
•There are native California red foxes still living in the Sierra Nevada.
•The native red foxes in the Sacramento Valley (V.v. patwin) are a subspecies genetically distinct from those in the Sierra.
•The two native California subspecies, along with Rocky Mountain and Cascade red foxes (V.v. macroura and V. v. cascadensis), formed a single large western population until the end of the last ice age, when the three mountain subspecies followed receding glaciers up to mountaintops, leaving the Sacramento Valley red fox isolated at low elevation.
Sacks' extensive research program focuses on canids, especially red foxes (evolution, ecology and conservation) and dogs (genetics, geographic origins and spread). He and his students also are working on other carnivores, including disease ecology and interactions among fishers, bobcats, coyotes and gray foxes, and population genetics of ringtails and coyotes.
http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=9596
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