Ubiquitous urban foxes

A bushy red-tailed fox kept an eye on the golfers Friday at the Sun Valley Golf Course.

In American folklore, the fox is a symbol of animal cunning, but it isn’t this dog-like animal’s crafty qualities that have helped it to proliferate in the Wood Rive Valley.

Free handouts from valley residents and a lack of predatory competition have helped foxes to multiply here unchecked.

The large numbers of urban foxes in the Wood River Valley are difficult to overlook. They appear as ghosts in the night; they show up on doorsteps awaiting food; they even watch as golfers drive balls down the valley’s numerous fairways.

When Idaho Department of Fish and Game conservation officer Lee Frost first arrived in the Wood River Valley 27 years ago, red foxes were rare; but now, toward the close of the century, they are extremely abundant.

"Living in the Wood River Valley is easy for a red fox," Frost said. "It’s really easy. The only control for red foxes right now is getting killed on the highway."

One of the fox’s natural population controls is the coyote, which is bigger and competes for the same food stores foxes do, usually more successfully. But "the only good coyote is a dead coyote" mentality of the West has driven the animals out of many of Idaho’s valleys, Frost said.

In the Wood River Valley, the burgeoning human population and development have forced coyotes out while foxes have learned to adapt to the present scenario.

"The absence of the coyote created a biological void, which the foxes moved right into and occupied," Frost said. "The urban fox is not quite as dependent on mice and voles like foxes away from the valley."

Foxes have caused problems for residents in certain regards. Domestic house cats and domestic ducks have been known to disappear.

"I’ve seen a fox just screaming across the Sun Valley golf course with a cat in its mouth, heading into the hills to its young," Frost said.

Frost averages seven or eight calls annually for house cat kills attributed to foxes.

Rabies is a perceived potential problem but not a real one, Frost said. There have been no local incidents involving diseased foxes and very few in Idaho.

"For the number of foxes that live in and around these urban areas, we really get very few complaints," Frost said.

Feeding the animals continues to be the biggest problem among the valley’s urban fox populations: "If anything is thrown out of kilter, it’s because we’re feeding them," Frost said. "If we didn’t feed them, it would be more normal. Because we’re feeding them, the population does well."

The local fox situation is not unique, Frost said. In many urban areas, places where man has moved into the fox’s traditional habitat, urban foxes are common.

"This phenomenon is repeated all around the country," Frost said. "It’s almost evolution how this animal has adapted its entire behavior to us and what we’re doing for it.