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FOUNTAIN VALLEY : Well-Fed Red Foxes Like Living at Park

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Visitors to Mile Square Regional Park may never see the red foxes that make their home in an undeveloped area of the recreation facility.

Ranger E. Parker Hancock said about 40 red foxes--mostly red in color with black sock-like markings on their paws--make their dens in culverts and open fields.

The foxes are not native to the county but were brought here years ago for fox hunting and fur ranching.

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Hancock said the foxes do not leave the park because they are treated like pets and are well fed by visitors.

A recently released study on red foxes, conducted through the department of wildlife at Humboldt State University, showed that the foxes living at the park do not disperse as normally as foxes living elsewhere in the county and state, Hancock said.

“They’re fat and happy and don’t need to look for other food sources,” Hancock said. “There’s nothing we can do. These people feel like they have to feed the foxes or they won’t survive.”

Rick Golightly, a professor of wildlife at Humboldt who oversaw the study, said that some foxes living at the park do leave the dens. But he said that because their food--scraps of meat--is supplied by humans, many foxes remain, which could pose trouble later.

“If their feeding is stopped for any reason, that could cause a large-scale dispersal--foxes would go to places where we don’t want them,” he said.

Golightly also said the human feeding of the foxes has resulted in “population sizes greater than what we would have at the same site if the foxes were not fed.”

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He also said the park foxes are heavier, some weighing up to 17 pounds, than foxes living outside the park. The foxes, which are less than 2 feet tall, normally weigh between 10 to 12 pounds, he said.

Because the diet of the foxes include birds and bird eggs, mammals and insects, their presence at the park and elsewhere in the county poses a threat to other native wildlife as well as to endangered species in coastal wetlands, Golightly said.

The foxes prey on such endangered birds as the California least tern, which nests on the ground, and the light-footed clapper rail, Golightly said. He said a nesting site of the least tern has been located at the mouth of the Santa Ana River.

Golightly said Orange County has a healthy red fox population--an estimated several hundred live mostly in the northwestern region of the county.

“They’re far more likely to be found in the urban areas,” said Golightly, and not in the more rural and undeveloped areas.

Golightly said the foxes also make their homes at golf courses and airfields and in flood control channels, power line rights of way, railroad corridors and other urban open spaces.

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Hancock said that the foxes are not a threat to park visitors and that there is no plan to have them removed.

While the foxes may be harmless to park visitors, Golightly warned that they are wild animals.

“They look cute and cuddly, but reach down and touch them and you’re going to get bitten,” he said.

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