Listing, and the Island Fox Conservation Working Group

The wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly, and that is often the case with endangered species. It certainly was for the island fox. By 1999-2000 we knew that island foxes were biologically, functionally endangered with extinction, but they weren’t placed on the federal endangered species list until 2004. It just takes a while to build up the momentum and do the paperwork. In fact, the US Fish and Wildlife Service did not produce an island fox recovery plan until 2015, seven years after the major recovery actions (captive breeding, golden eagle removal, bald eagle reintroduction and non-native ungulate removal) had ceased.

Fortuitously, a very unofficial, voluntary, inclusive group had formed early on to help guide the development and implementation of island fox recovery actions. That first fox expert group that we convened in 1999 continued to meet yearly to work on island fox conservation issues. In fact, it has been meeting annually for 20+ years, and remains committed to island fox conservation even after the species recovered.

The group, which I initially called a recovery team (and received flak for that; it wasn’t an official recovery team) became the Island Fox Conservation Working Group and grew organically, as needed, to include hundreds of folks committed to island fox conservation and willing to work on addressing island fox issues. The team included the stakeholders, the agencies and entities that managed island fox habitat: the National Park Service, The Nature Conservancy, the Catalina Island Conservancy, and the US Navy, wildlife management agencies such as US Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, academics like the University of California, and nonprofits such as the Institute for Wildlife Studies.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service was smart enough to incorporate the group – the entire group – into its official island fox recovery team, and used the group and several years of annual fox meetings to craft the recovery plan (all built around actions developed by the group). This under-the-radar unofficial group, really a coalition of the willing, was successful because it didn’t force anything down anybody’s throat, and worked mainly by consensus. Not that the group lacked contention. Like any family, it had its differences. But the good will among members and the unified goal produced recovery actions and targeted research that enjoyed broad appeal and support. In fact, the group can be used as a model for conservation in these impactful times, where species and ecosystems will require recovery actions long before they are officially recognized as endangered by governments.

I must say it was one of the most satisfying aspects of the recovery program for me. I led the group and the annual meetings, and still do, and felt it was my job to listen to everybody. Light hand on the tiller. The professional relationships we nurtured with this approach have been the foundation for its continued success.

And the effort, the work of hundreds, was undeniably successful. By 2016 the three northern subspecies had recovered sufficiently, with safeguards in place, to justify removal from the endangered species list. It was one of the fastest recoveries ever, and was the fastest recovery of an endangered mammal in the history of the Endangered Species Act. Like I said, the work of hundreds, and in the end the foxes helped themselves.