Cheshire Cat Photo Blog(...said the Cat: 'we're all mad here....')

A subspecies of red fox that has lived in the Sacramento Valley has been ASSUMED to be nonnative for over 100 years. Folks ASSUMED that the subspecies had escaped from fur farms and hunting parties in the 1900s and considered the red foxes a pest that threaten ground-nesting native birds.

You know what happens when you ASSUME!

Ben Sacks, assistant professor of biology at both the University of California, Davis and California State University, Sacramento found that the subspecies, which he calls the Sacramento Valley red fox, is a native subspecies unique to lowland areas north of the American River and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. These red foxes are very different genetically from nonnatives elsewhere in California and also very different from gray foxes that are native across most of California.

The subspecies is most closely related to the Sierra Nevada red fox, a native species that is believed to be at the risk of extinction in its final refuge within Lassen Volcanic National Park.

The research has been accepted for publication early this year in the peer-reviewed journal, Conservation Genetics.

The native red fox is visually indistinguishable from the nonnative variety. Both resemble a medium-sized dog, 18-20 inches tall, aounnd 25 pounds, and have a white-tipped tail that is as long as the body. The Sacramento Valley red fox thrives around small farms, especially near Woodland in Yolo County and Willows in Glenn County.

The fox likely sleeps in hedgerows, thickets of blackberries, drainage ditches, and road culverts. The fox keeps a den only to give birth and raise its young. It does not like flooded agriculture, such as rice fields, preferring row crops and orchards. The foxes eat everything from fruit and insects to birds (including domestic chickens) and rodents. They consume mice and ground squirrels that could become pests otherwise.

A major question is whether the new subspecies merits special protection, like the mountain red fox or San Joaquin kit fox. Currently, not enough is known, and more studies are planned.

Brian Cypher, a research ecologist with the Endangered Species Recovery program at CSU Stanislaus, who has spent his career studying the San Joaquin kit fox, said that it might be a radical change in thinking for some people to shift from viewing the red foxes as a nonnative species to a native species that might need to be conserved.

-Bill at

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