May 10th, 2024

​I recently visited San Juan Island, one of a group of islands in the San Juan Islands.  Red foxes have been a part of San Juan Island for many years and were imported to kill the overabundant bunny population, and bunnies were imported prior to the foxes to feed people.  So neither the bunnies nor the foxes are indigenous to the island nor is either population in danger of extinction. Foxes acclimate easily, not just in the San Juan Islands, but anywhere in the world that you find a fox, and the San Juan Island foxes flourished on the island.   
 
The island is populated by very wealthy people who have beautiful homes with wonderful sea views.  These people appear to feel threatened by photographers who they believe are harassing the fox in order to get shots.  There has been an on-going war of sorts for many years.  The islanders were able to get a plains area in a state park that housed several fox dens closed to everyone due to their complaints about photographers.  This simply pushed photographers to any den in the BLM portion of land not far from the state park.  The BLM has different rules about wildlife than the state park does. 
 
When I was there photographing a fox den I was shouted at on more than one occasion by locals, who always seemed to have their dog on a leash walking with them.  A woman saw us photographing and walked in front of us on the trail with her dog where minutes before had been fox kits playing but she shouted at us to leave the fox alone and told us we were harassing them but yet she seemed to think it was ok to walk her dog right where the fox kits had been minutes before.  Another person shouted at us from a distance away to leave a fox along that we were photographing as it sat watching their husky, on a leash, that had stopped it in its tracks, so the fox was obviously bothered by the dog.  The neighbors have been feeding these foxes for years and the foxes are very acclimated to people because of this.  It has also created a situation where foxes get run over on the road because the neighbors live across the road from their den so the road must be crossed to get the food they offer.  We saw one fox with what appeared to be a hen egg.  We saw various foxes cross the road and go by each house looking for a handout.  These neighbors don’t seem to understand that what they are doing is wrong.
 
They complained to Fish and Game when we were there, the government entity that patrols for BLM.  A ranger showed up to watch us photograph.  I spoke with her and asked what the wildlife rules were on BLM land.  She said that the only rule they had was to not impact in any way what the fox was doing.  Several neighbors had yelled that we had to stay 75 feet away from a fox and this is not the case on BLM land, there is no minimum distance to stay away.  We were probably around 50 feet as we photographed and no one in the groups we saw over the three-day period did anything that I would call unethical or questionable with the wildlife.  The foxes are so acclimated to people that they walked directly past me on several occasions and actually approached someone who had a to-go container in their hand taking it back to their car tried to get the container, he had to shoo the fox away.  The Fish and Game ranger said that neither Fish and Game nor BLM had a problem with the photographers, but they did have problems with the neighbors.  The ranger that day simply sat on a rock and looked at her phone and told us she was there to appease the neighbors and that they sometimes got 15 emails a day.
 
It was interesting to be at a fox den area and to observe the family.  There was a black male, limping on three legs due to some type of injury but he looked quite healthy and well-fed.  Then the red female with kits, someone said five but I only saw four at one time.  Then a black vixen and a red vixen that were subordinate females to help care for the kits and hunt.  According to a book I read by an animal scientist subordinate females are a female who did not become pregnant during mating season, these subordinate females are somewhat like hired help would be to us and they are tasked with duties by the male and female. Subordinate females, in studies, do not live as long as a normal mated female, most likely because of their inferior position in the fox family. But if the female that was mated was taken out of the picture then a subordinate female would move into that place in the family.  Sounds to me like a good back-up plan. 
 
We got to observe as the female that was hunting came up the trail and toward the den with a dead vole to give to the pups, who were probably at the end of five weeks old, to get them started on hunting.  We also watched as one of the females brough in fish from the nearby sea cliff area, but I don’t think that was for the pups, maybe for the male who was injured.  I did see one female bring in some food and the other female, the black one, run out and take it from the red female and eat it so they apparently do hunt for each other. The pups came out several times and it was fun to watch them play with each other and the parents.  If it were not for the vicious neighbors it would have been a 100% positive experience in wildlife behavior.      

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