ON THE TRAIL OF THE RED FOX : Coastal Intruder Poses Problem for Protectors of Rare Birds

Three times last spring, their footprints were found where an electrified fence was breached around a nesting colony of endangered least terns at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station.

As many as seven of them were seen boldly stalking four clapper rails at high tide, when the shy, weed-nesting birds were flushed nearer the edge of the base’s 1,100-acre salt marsh, a national wildlife refuge.

Appealing though they are, with their luminous eyes, intelligent canine face, glistening rusty coat and bushy white-tipped tail, wildlife experts say the red foxes of the naval base threaten to wipe out critical breeding populations of both species of endangered birds.

“It is truly a nightmare,” said Barbara Massey, a biological consultant from Long Beach who has charted a recent dramatic decline of the marsh-dwelling birds since the non-native foxes discovered the secluded coastal base in the mid- to late 1970s.

“The red foxes have completely destroyed the rabbit and ground squirrel populations at the base; now they’re eating everything there is,” Massey said. “They are disrupting the entire ecology of the area.”

“We’ve caught them with burrowing owls, which are also protected birds, and great blue herons; we even found pelican bones the other day--and a fox is the only thing around that could have taken it,” said Patricia Jones, environmental services coordinator for the 5,000-acre ordinance storage facility off Anaheim Bay.

If nothing is done by next spring to rid the base of these interlopers believed to be descendants of fur ranch escapees or European animals planted for enthusiasts of the fox hunt, wildlife experts fear none of the endangered birds will survive.

Yet federal officials who manage the refuge are reluctant to attack the red fox problem for fear of triggering a public outcry similar to that for the feral goats of San Clemente Island and the burros of Death Valley and the Grand Canyon.

Those fears, according to some state and federal wildlife officials, have led the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to retreat from a controversial plan to destroy the foxes and to examine other options, including relocation.

“A lot of people are afraid it’s going to be San Clemente Part II,” said Peter Xander, a California Coastal Commission analyst for the nearby Bolsa Chica wetlands, where red foxes have also been found.

The gray fox and kit fox are native to California’s coastal region. But red foxes, found in cold mountainous climates throughout the United States and Canada, have been sighted from the Santa Monica mountains south to Bolsa Chica, near Huntington Beach, as long as 15 to 20 years ago.

Experts believe some escaped from a fur ranch believed to have existed on the Palos Verdes peninsula in the 1920s. Others are thought to have migrated down from the Santa Monica mountains where fox hunters hoped to introduce the sport of English royalty, according to Donald Patten, curator of mammals at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History.

Where there are natural predators, like coyotes, only a few eke out a living. But at the isolated Seal Beach refuge, where coyotes have not been seen in years, the red fox population has mushroomed to an estimated 20 to 40 animals.

Throughout the country, state and national park managers and private groups are spending big bucks annually to rid sensitive ecological areas of non-native animals and even plants.

Some, like the feral goats denuding San Clemente Island and nibbling at U.S. Navy cables and six species of endangered plants, are descendants of escaped or abandoned domestic animals. Others, like the African clawed frog proliferating in Southern California waterways, were inadvertently or deliberately let loose. Without natural predators of their own, these exotic creatures gained a foothold and, in many cases, have taken over.

In Australia, formerly domesticated animals like camels and water buffaloes have been blamed for destroying sensitive habitat and threatening domestic cattle with disease. On the isolated Galapagos Islands off South America, feral pigs have been blamed for the disappearance of land iguanas and reduced numbers of the Galapagos tortoise that Charles Darwin used to develop his theory of natural selection.

In Hawaii, wild pigs descended from a few domestic ones brought 200 years ago by Captain Cook threaten many native species and have prompted officials at the Hawaii Volcanoes National park to hunt them down. But so far, less than 10% of the estimated 4,000 feral pigs have been killed.

But such irreversible measures have provoked heated attacks from animal rights groups.

The U.S. Navy planned to launch an all-out attack on the goats of San Clemente Island. But intervention by author Cleveland Amory and the Fund for Animals prevented the assault, first through court intervention, and finally by Amory’s appeal to his old schoolmate, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, to let the group trap and remove the goats.

But in successive rescue efforts in the last few years, only about 4,000 of the more than 5,000 goats have been rounded up and brought to shore.

Biological consultant Massey and state Fish and Game wildlife manager Ron Hein say there isn’t that kind of time left for the clapper rail, thought to be the state’s most endangered bird.

“The rail population has absolutely crashed in Anaheim Bay (the common name among biologists for the Seal Beach refuge),” Massey said. “We hardly see any nesting there anymore at all.”

Massey and other experts concede that only circumstantial evidence links the red fox to the disappearance of the clapper rail, a small marsh bird with an awkward gait.

The link to the least terns is direct, however. Three times last spring, when an electrified fence failed around a four-acre nesting island for the terns, red fox prints were found at the breach point. Although it is not usually a digging animal, base environmental coordinator Jones said the red foxes dug under the fence, which must be posted slightly above ground to prevent shorting out.

What had been a successful nesting grounds, where 35 of the small white birds with a black crown were fledged in 1981, has declined drastically, according to Massey, who has been involved in the annual census counts since 1973.

The least tern hatchlings dropped first in 1982 to only a single bird. Wildlife officials suspected local skunks of breaching the electric fence and strengthened it. By 1984, 33 baby least terns survived the nesting season. But this year, Jones said only three made it.

Hein, supervisor for Fish and Game reserves in Orange County, criticizes federal wildlife authorities for letting the red fox problem get out of hand.

“Action should have been taken when the problem was first known,” Hein said. “It’s ridiculous to allow a foreign exotic to prey on two species of endangered animals.”

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service supervisor Nancy Kaufman agrees that something must be done, and quickly.

Kaufman said plans to get funding for a removal program before the end of the fiscal year have been held up by required environmental documentation of the problem and study of the alternatives.

Kaufman said wildlife service officials believe that trapping and destruction of the Seal Beach red foxes is the only viable solution. “If we were to let them go somewhere else, we would simply be creating a problem there,” she said.

Yet Tom Charmley, manager of the federal refuge, denied that destruction of the animals is even being considered.

Charmley said federal and state laws on endangered species require that extensive reports be made before any action is taken. He declined to say when those reports would be completed and said he would prefer to make public as little as possible about the problem.

“I’m concerned about adverse public relations for the base, too,” said Jones, who has worked at the base since 1983.

“I’d still prefer to see them trapped and relocated, so I’m dealing with some large military bases in the Midwest, where these red foxes are found,” she said. “I’m trying to get funding of about $5,000 or $6,000 for transportation to relocate them.”

But she fears that if not all the red foxes are trapped, the problem will repeat itself and suggests reintroducing a natural predator, the coyote, which roamed the base until the mid-1970s.

Jones and others noted that when coyotes returned to Pt. Mugu, where red foxes were creating similar problems in recent years, the red fox population virtually disappeared.

But Massey remains fearful that the unwieldy process will prevent action until it is too late.

“I feel very strongly that the red fox has to be removed from the base this winter or it may be too late,” Massey said.