COSTA MESA : This Family Literally Lives on the Freeway

There’s at least one type of Orange County commuter who doesn’t hate the Costa Mesa Freeway--the red fox, a family of which has taken up residence on an embankment.

Several days ago, a construction crew came across the mother, a father, an adult offspring of that couple and six pups on a finished stretch of the 2.5-mile Costa Mesa Freeway extension that is scheduled to open to traffic on April 30.

Rather than trap and transport or euthanize the foxes, state officials plan to let the family decide when to move on its own. They predict that the foxes will pull out once they realize that they have chosen the wrong neighborhood.

The cars, Caltrans and the state Department of Fish and Game officials said, will be allowed to roll.

“Caltrans will cooperate with any group that would like to see the foxes relocated,” agency spokesman Albert Miranda said, “but first they have to get the approval of Fish and Game, and right now, Fish and Game wants them to stay where they are.”

The adult male fox wears a radio transmitter attached to a collar put on by a student researcher a year ago, when it and a female fox established a den in a county construction yard near Barr Lumber, a hardware and building materials store near the junction of the Costa Mesa and Corona del Mar freeways.

It is not clear where the foxes lived before that. Generally speaking, officials said, red foxes, which are natives of the eastern states, were imported to California years ago by hunters and furriers and also by people who kept them as pets. Some escaped, and some were released.

One person has offered to fly the red fox family out in a helicopter, Miranda said. Others have offered food and water. An Illinois woman has offered to have them shipped to the Chicago area.

Fish and Game officials, however, believe that concern about protecting the wayward animals is misplaced because red foxes are not native to California and they pose a threat to the least tern, a bird on the federal endangered species list. The state even has a policy to euthanize red foxes if necessary. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups generally support the agency’s policy toward red foxes.

“We would like to get a feel for what they do,” said Gordan Cribbs, Fish and Game’s regional patrol chief. “Our concern is that they are close to Upper Newport Bay, where they pose a threat to rare and endangered species, and we need to understand how they get around.”

Cribbs said the foxes found on the Costa Mesa Freeway will probably decide to move when the cars start whizzing by.

“Our obligation is to protect native California species,” he said.

Cribbs noted that the fox also competes for food with the white tail kite, birds of prey often seen hovering over South Coast Plaza and the freeway median strips nearby, preying on insects and rodents.

Jeff Lewis, a graduate student from Humboldt State University in Arcata who put the collar on the fox last year, said the male only drops by the den once in a while. An adult from last year’s litter helps out by shepherding the little ones.

Lewis is under contract to Fish and Game to study the red foxes’ habits.

“They’re very familiar with the freeways,” Lewis said. “They’ve been surrounded by the freeways for, I’m told, at least three years. They travel in the early morning hours before the traffic starts.”

But will the foxes move when the freeway extension opens?

“I don’t know,” Lewis said. “The adults are very savvy about traffic . . . . But you know, you always run the risk of getting hit.”