Channel Islands National Park

Channel Islands National Park is currently implementing aggressive, expensive long-term recovery actions for the island fox (Urocyon littoralis), a species that is not currently listed as endangered or threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. Even so, the imminent threat of extinction for three subspecies of island foxes mandates that the National Park Service (NPS) manage this functionally endangered species with the resolve and the resources usually reserved for listed species, but without access to any funding source for long-term, large-scale natural resource pro-jects. The island fox is the smallest canid in North America. Adults weigh approxi-mately 2.0 kg and are a third smaller than their mainland progenitor, the gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus). The island fox is one of the most geographically re-stricted canid species, being found only on the six largest of California’s eight Chan-nel Islands. Both genetic and morphological differences among the island popula-tions support the differentiation of the species into six separate subspecies, one on each island where the fox occurs. Within the park, island foxes occur on San Migue