The Cascade Red Fox is imperiled by invasive lowland fox species and climate change. This team of women from UW College of the Environment explained the situation to us at our board meeting. A good candidate for the next "charismatic megafauna" to gain a constituency after wolves, grizzlies, wolveries and fishers, the Cascade Red Fox currently seems to have been largely overlooked except in Mt. Rainier National Park where it's become so accustomed to people it's seen with some regularity by visitors, who tend to ignore warning signs and feed them. Which only leads them to spend more time near parking lots and roads where they get run over frequently. Rangers in Rainer Park are now armed with squirt guns to try to deter them from begging!
Elsewhere in the North Cascades sightings are very rare, but it's not known if that's because there are so few or because they are so naturally reclusive.
Their professor is John Marzluff of corvid research fame:https://environment.uw.edu/faculty/john-marzluff/
Watch for the full report in the next issue of The Wild Cascades!
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