JACKSON, Wyo. — The red fox, scientifically known as Vulpes Vulpes and occasionally abbreviated to VuVu by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), has no population estimates in either Yellowstone National Park (YNP) or Grand Teton National Park (GTNP), although remote cameras and collars are helping monitor the species.
According to the USFS, red foxes are the most widely distributed carnivore in the world. A video from Jackson Hole EcoTour Adventures’s guide Seth Latka reveals that red foxes are notable for their exceptional, advantageous hearing that helps them hunt in the snow and tall grasses, able to hear a watch ticking from 40 yards away.
The National Park Service (NPS) says the red fox has been documented in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) since the 1880s. After wolves were reintroduced to the GYE, the NPS suggests their competition with coyotes reduced the number of local coyotes and likely allowed the fox numbers to increase.
Red foxes are not considered a keystone species within YNP, which is defined as a species that plays a disproportionately large role in their environments relative to their abundance. However, the YNP Public Affairs Office still emphasizes that red foxes are an important component to the mesocarnivore (animals whose diet consist of 50 to 70 percent meat) and scavenger groups, and in this way play an important role in GYE food web dynamics and biodiversity.
Even with no current population estimates available for red foxes, the YNP Public Affairs Office confirms they are commonly seen in the winter months in and around open valleys in places like Hayden, Lamar and Pelican Valleys. Expanded monitoring by biologists, wildlife watchers and noninvasive monitoring tools like NPS remote cameras have been increasing red fox sightings in the last several decades; YNP Public Affairs Office says that even remote camera traps for cougar population estimates regularly detect foxes across northern Yellowstone, showing wide distribution and occupancy.
In GTNP, Wildlife Biologist John Stephenson says they do not have a reliable method to determine a population trend for the past few years, but GTNP Natural and Cultural Resources Vital Signs notes that as of 2021 a total of 40 individual foxes have been captured in the Park and 39 have been collared. University of Wyoming graduate students with the Holbrook Team will analyze the data being collected for insight on disease, movement and diet going forward.
In terms of diet, YNP Public Affairs Office says red foxes and coyotes overlap in this way, which can put them in competition within the GYE. Their diets includes rodents, birds and carrion scavenged from wolf and cougar ungulate kills or ungulates dying from other natural causes. The two species can also compete for habitat selection.
“Because of such overlap, direct competition can occur, especially when resources become more limiting,” YNP Public Affairs Office explains to Buckrail. “Studies have found coyotes are dominant to foxes, sometimes acting aggressive to them and displacing them, especially in the presence of a carcass. In times of food abundance, tolerance has been documented to some degree.”
YNP Public Affairs Office also notes, though, that current camera trap studies are finding different daily activity patterns in some habitats, meaning there are cases when coyotes and red foxes overlap infrequently in space and time.
But coyotes aren’t the only ones causing problems for red foxes. According to the 2021 GTNP Vital Signs, the purposeful feeding of individual red foxes by visitors, the ingestion of fish remains left by anglers and the acquisition of unsecured food in developed areas is food conditioning and habituating these animals. In 2021, one food conditioned, habituated male fox had to be euthanized.
Additionally, vehicle collisions are the primary cause of fox mortality in GTNP. The Vital Signs acknowledges the 2021 mortalities were the highest since 2018, and included pups. The USFS also points out that red foxes are particularly susceptible to rabies.
Despite this, Stephenson confirms to Buckrail that the red fox population in the Park is not considered vulnerable, or at risk for becoming threatened or endangered. The NPS also suggests on their website that red foxes are actually more abundant than previously thought in YNP.
