By Richard Arlin Walker and Molly Neely-Walker

Many thanks to Deputy County Manager Tillery Williams, County Communications Coordinator Erin Andrews and all participants in the effort to develop a wildlife protection ordinance and an educational and public outreach component.

Human behavior around the island’s red foxes spurred this effort. Wildlife Protection Group participants have brought their expertise, observations and best intentions to the discussion.

A question was asked whether the red foxes are worthy of protection because they are not a native species. Indeed, the foxes were introduced to the island as early as 111 years ago. But they have adapted to the island and are now part of the local ecosystem. They control the population of rabbits, also an introduced species, which, left unchecked, would do exceedingly more damage to native plants, soils and cultural resources.

In addition, it is simply inhumane to crowd an animal’s den or block its access to feeding grounds or introduce it to feeding by humans. Human-fed foxes have been struck by vehicles while crossing the road to get to a handout. Human feeding is harmful to foxes and other wildlife because it promotes a dependency on humans for food. A human-fed wild animal is a dead animal.

The late Brad Pillow, a volunteer naturalist at San Juan Island National Historical Park, documented fox kits being killed by eagles as their mothers moved them in search of more isolated den sites.

These issues are not new, and the island’s foxes were the subject of considerable separate research by Pillow and wildlife ecologist Gregory A. Green.

Green, a professor at Western Washington University, collected and analyzed island fox scat samples for DNA tests to determine the island foxes’ ancestry. If DNA tests showed that the island’s foxes were related to the Cascade red fox, which the state Department of Fish and Wildlife listed as an endangered species in 2022, that could have made resources available for their protection. Unfortunately, the island’s foxes, first introduced to San Juan Island in 1914, are descended from Alaskan fur farm foxes.

The Cascade red fox is considered the true native fox. “It arrived in North America almost half a million years ago,” Jocelyn Akins of the Cascades Carnivore Project said in a 2023 interview. Foxes inhabiting lower elevations in Western Washington — including the Alaskan fur farm foxes and their island fox descendants — “are descended from foxes that migrated into North America at the end of the last Ice Age, approximately 20,000 to 12,000 years ago.”

The European hare was introduced by settlers to San Juan Island between 1875 and 1895, and by the 1920s, their population had soared. Foxes were introduced to the island as biological control agents. Today, the island’s foxes prey primarily on European rabbits, voles, berries and insects.

Elexis Fredy, superintendent of San Juan Island National Historical Park, said in a 2023 interview that the foxes, regardless of origin and lineage, are still wild animals worthy of protection from human interference.

“We’re not a wilderness that has been untouched by man,” she said. “The landscape we’ve inherited has been tended since the Coast Salish peoples occupied and tended these lands. The species that are here – ourselves included – have benefitted from that landscape and have as much right to be here as any other species on the island.”

A Wildlife Protection Ordinance will help remind residents and visitors to keep a healthy distance and let wild animals be wild. Other ideas that have been discussed: Provide designated areas for photography at American Camp and Cattle Point, and allow photographers to use an “Ethical Wildlife Photographer” logo on their work after completing an ethical wildlife photography course.

We lift our hands in thanks to all who care about our environment and its inhabitants.