Native only to the California Channel Islands, the island fox is the smallest canid in North America. Populations on four of the islands were threatened to extinction in the 1990s due to human-mediated predation and disease. This is the first account of the natural history and ecology of the island fox, illustrating both the vulnerability of island ecosystems and the efficacy of cooperative conservation measures. It explains in detail the intense conservation actions required to recover fox populations, such as captive breeding and reintroduction, and large-scale ecosystem manipulation. These actions were successful due in large part to extraordinary collaboration among the scientists, managers and public advocates involved in the recovery effort. The book also examines the role of some aspects of island fox biology, characteristic of the 'island syndrome', in facilitating their recovery, including high productivity and an apparent adaptation to periodic genetic bottlenecks.

Channel Islands National Park was the first park in the National Park System to design and implement a long-term ecological monitoring program to track changes in the condition of terrestrial and marine natural resources that the park is responsible for managing. Monitoring of landbirds began on several of the islands in the park in 1993, and since then, the sampling design, methodology, database, and data analysis and reporting procedures have been reviewed and improved and are now formalized in this protocol document.

This report covers island fox recovery actions conducted by park staff in calendar year 2010. The recovery actions, which included island fox population and mortality monitoring, were conducted under U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Recovery Permit TE86267-0, which has separate reporting requirements (Coonan 2011). This report presents the results of our efforts in 2010 to capture and monitor island fox populations on San Miguel and Santa Rosa Island via small trapping grids and transects, and to track annual survival and mortality causes via radiotelemetry. The purpose of the monitoring was to: * assess condition of individual foxes; * replace radiocollars or affix new radiocollars as required; * establish a "sentinel" group of unvaccinated, radiocollared animals; * vaccinate foxes against canine distemper virus and rabies; and * estimate density and islandwide population size

The National Park Service, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science office in Fort Collins, Colorado publishes a range of reports that address natural resource topics of interest and applicability to a broad audience in the National Park Service and others in natural resource management, including scientists, conservation and environmental constituencies, and the public.

Native only to the California Channel Islands, the island fox is the smallest canid in North America. Populations on four of the islands were threatened to extinction in the 1990s due to human-mediated predation and disease. This is the first account of the natural history and ecology of the island fox, illustrating both the vulnerability of island ecosystems and the efficacy of cooperative conservation measures. It explains in detail the intense conservation actions required to recover fox populations, such as captive breeding and reintroduction, and large-scale ecosystem manipulation. These actions were successful due in large part to extraordinary collaboration among the scientists, managers and public advocates involved in the recovery effort. The book also examines the role of some aspects of island fox biology, characteristic of the 'island syndrome', in facilitating their recovery, including high productivity and an apparent adaptation to periodic genetic bottlenecks.