For the first time in history, the majority of humans lives in urban areas; more than three billion people reside in cities around the world. As we’re moving into town, red foxes are right behind – or we’re behind them, sometimes claiming turf they’ve already staked out.
Article by Cheryl Lyn Dybas Photography by Ilya Raskin
In Madison, Wisconsin, the foxes tunnel under garage floors to dig dens. Foxes in Fairfax, Virginia, go them one better, stealing newspapers from suburban front porches, the better to line their domiciles, or, as one homeowner quipped, to read up on prime real estate in the neighborhood.
Where foxes and people most frequently share zip codes, however, may be in beach towns. Up and down the U.S. East Coast, among sand dunes and along oceanfront thoroughfares, red foxes have become common residents. For better or worse.
In one seaside New Jersey city, red foxes are at the center of a heated love-hate relationship. Many Brigantine residents welcome the foxes, which show up everywhere from bungalow backyards to baseball diamonds. Some locals, however, accuse the foxes of feasting on piping plovers, shorebirds that nest on Brigantine’s beaches and are endangered in New Jersey. State wildlife officials have stepped in to remove some of the foxes, leading to an uproar on this island five miles north of Atlantic City. The fox vs. plover brouhaha pits neighbor against neighbor and one wildlife species against another.
Life in the big city
In part because of their cosmopolitan dining habits, urban red foxes are the subjects of growing scientific interest, so much so that researchers have coined a term for these and other city-dwelling carnivores: synanthropes.
Synanthropes demonstrate how quickly wild species adapt to the pressures of living in unnatural habitats, says wildlife biologist David Drake, director of the Urban Canids Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Beyond adapting, synanthropes are evolving. Some researchers believe that urban areas are accelerating evolution. Changes that would usually take centuries are happening in years to decades. For example, urban red foxes in Israel have higher survival rates and smaller home ranges than their country cousins.
In fact, our presence may have shortened the distance foxes and other mammals roam by two-thirds, according to an analysis published in the January 26, 2018, issue of the journal Science. In areas with large human “footprints” – those we’ve heavily influenced — mammals’ maximum ranges averaged 4.3 miles. In low-footprint areas, it was 13.7 miles.
Some species fare better than others in cities and suburbs. Medium-sized carnivores such as red foxes are what ecologists call urban adapters. Much of their success stems from their diets; they’re far from picky eaters. They trot along carrying everything from discarded fast-food wrappers to fisheries by-catch that washes ashore.
Where foxes and people can (sometimes) coexist: Long Island’s red foxes
Red foxes are the most widespread, and possibly most abundant, urban predators in Australia, Europe, Japan and North America, states Carl Soulsbury in the book Urban Carnivores: Ecology, Conflict, and Conservation.
Just ask wildlife biologist Sarah Karpanty of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Karpanty is conducting a study of red fox population density and dietary ecology on Fire Island, New York. Her research territory extends from Robert Moses State Park at one end of the island to Fire Island National Seashore on the other.
The area has one of the highest red fox densities recorded to date. How the foxes got there, no one is sure, but they likely made their way across the eight-mile-long Robert Moses Causeway that connects the city of Islip, New York, with Fire Island.
On a spring morning with a stiff ocean breeze flapping small craft warning flags, Karpanty and her students Kat Miles and Claire Helmke are at the state park’s Field 5, as it’s known. Field 5 is in fact a parking lot. The researchers cross the asphalt in Karpanty’s jeep, and pull up near some dumpsters.
Not far from the trash receptacles, at the base of a pitch pine tree rooted in a dune, is an opening in the sand. There a fox family has taken up residence. Before long, one, two…seven small orange-red faces poke out their heads. The biologists are well-hidden in nearby shrubs, so the young foxes emerge and start to play, batting each other with small paws.
From there, the scientists head south to Field 2 and the nearby Pitch & Putt Golf Course. Here, as at Field 5, a fox den is hidden beneath vegetation, this time in a dense thicket of poison ivy and greenbrier. The park’s ad states that the course “offers a taste of the ocean, with the high greenery and challenge of a true golf course.” It might add: “and with wildlife nearby.” So near, in fact, that a stray ball might roll into a fox’s den.
How many foxes make a living on Fire Island, and how do they do it? Based on a recent survey, Karpanty estimates that between Fire Island Inlet at the island’s western end and Old Inlet at its eastern end, there are 39 adults and 57 kits. For the entire island, Karpanty has found that there are between 2.37 adults and 3.51 kits per square kilometer (one-third of a square mile), in a total available area of 16.18 square kilometers (6.25 square miles).
“That’s a lot of foxes,” she says.
The numbers are similar to those of other fox-rich locales: Edinburgh in the U.K.; Melbourne, Australia; and Chicago in the U.S., according to Urban Carnivores: Ecology, Conflict and Conservation.
Fox nutritionist needed
Foxes are living high on Fire Island, although not always on the healthiest diets. “We’ve found everything from take-out food to chip bags at dens,” Karpanty says. The foxes have also left feathers and a lot of fish scales at their “doors.” Local fishers often discard skates as trash fish. The skates then wash up on beaches, where foxes make off with fish parts.
“These foxes are also into ‘begging’ behavior like what you might see in your dog,” says Karpanty. Red foxes haunt the main street running up and down Fire Island, stopping to look at cars passing by to see if people will offer handouts. As the researchers watch, a car stops in the road. The occupants roll down the windows and toss a scrap to a waiting fox, who runs for it. “Obviously this isn’t a good thing,” comments Karpanty.
Accepting handouts can have disastrous results. In January, 2017, a fox that chased cars for food in Robert Moses State Park was fatally shot by an unidentified man with a crossbow. The dead fox was a mature female who was part of Karpanty’s study. “We’re asking visitors to the island to please not feed the foxes – nor any wildlife,” says Karpanty. “If people like the foxes, the best thing they can do is place their leftovers in the nearest trash can, not on the road.”
Whether in Brigantine, Fire Island or any other town — beachfront or inland — can we coexist with red foxes? Often unbeknownst to us, Karpanty says, we already are.
Click through the full album here to see more amazing [and adorable] photography of red foxes on Long Island.
Award-winning science journalist and ecologist Cheryl Lyn Dybas, a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Writers, has brought a passion for wildlife and conservation toNational Geographic, Natural History, National Wildlife, BBC Wildlife, Yankee, Scientific American and many other publications, and is a Field Editor at Ocean Geographic. Eye-to-eye with the wild is her favorite place to be.
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