Fox thought to be extinct found in California.

Three weeks ago, U.S. Forest Service biologists thought they found a fox in the mountains of central California that is supposed to be extinct.

The biologists looked to experts at the University of California, Davis to confirm this finding. Sure enough, the fox they stumbled across was this thought-to-be-extinct fox, a Sierra Nevada red fox (Vulpes vulpes necator).

How the Sierra Nevada Red Fox Was Found & Identified

Photographs of the fox were taken by a Forest Service trail camera near Sonora Pass and showed the fox biting a bait bag of chicken scraps. The bait bag was shipped to two expert wildlife genetics researchers working in the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory, Ben Sacks and Mark Statham. Regarding these researchers, UC Davis writes: “Since 2006, they have radically altered our understanding of red foxes in California, supplying information crucial to conservation efforts.”

Analyzing DNA from saliva they scraped off the tooth punctures on the bag, Sacks and Statham confirmed that the spotted fox was definitely a Sierra Nevada red fox.

“This is the most exciting animal discovery we have had in California since the wolverine in the Sierra two years ago — only this time, the unexpected critter turned out to be home-grown, which is truly big news,” Sacks said. (The wolverine found in the Sierra Nevada “was an immigrant from Wyoming,” UC Davis reported.)

California Red Fox Research and Findings

Sacks and his colleagues are leaders in California red fox research. Some of their key research and findings are as follows:

Four years ago, Sacks began analyzing California red fox DNA collected from scat, hair and saliva from live animals, and skin and bones from museum specimens. Until then, the expert consensus was that any red fox in the Central Valley and coastal regions of the state was a descendant of Eastern red foxes (V.v. fulva) brought here in the 1860s for hunting and fur farms.

Sacks and his colleagues have confirmed that red fox populations in coastal lowlands, the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California were indeed introduced from the eastern United States (and Alaska). But they have also shown that:

* There are native California red foxes still living in the Sierra Nevada.
* The native red foxes in the Sacramento Valley (V.v. patwin) are a subspecies genetically distinct from those in the Sierra.
* The two native California subspecies, along with Rocky Mountain and Cascade red foxes (V.v. macroura and V. v. cascadensis), formed a single large western population until the end of the last ice age, when the three mountain subspecies followed receding glaciers up to mountaintops, leaving the Sacramento Valley red fox isolated at low
elevation.

With so many species going extinct these days, it is great to see one “coming back to life.”

Photo Credits: Keith Slausen and UC Davis, respectively

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A University of California LA geographer notes in book that northern countries such as Canada, Scandinavia and Russia are likely to thrive and become formidable economic powers.

Laurence C. Smith writes in “The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilizations Northern Future” that northern countries and some northern states of the US will become large economic powers and migration magnets.

“In many ways, the New North is well positioned for the coming century even as its unique ecosystem is threatened by the linked forces of hydrocarbon development and amplified climate change,” writes Smith, a UCLA professor of geography and of earth and space sciences.

Smith also makes several other predictions which the UCLA note below;

New shipping lanes will open during the summer in the Arctic, allowing Europe to realize its 500-year-old dream of direct trade between the Atlantic and the Far East, and resulting in new access to and economic development in the north.

Oil resources in Canada will be second only to those in Saudi Arabia, and the country’s population will swell by more than 30 percent, a growth rate rivaling India’s and six times faster than China’s.

NORCs will be among the few place on Earth where crop production will likely increase due to climate change.

NORCs collectively will constitute the fourth largest economy in the world, behind the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), the European Union and the United States.

NORCs will become the envy of the world for their reserves of fresh water, which may be sold and transported to other regions.

Read more about what Smith has to say at the UCLA website, but this book is definitely on my to read list.

Source: UCLA

A new report issued by US environmental and scientific federal agencies suggests that there is a growing thread of hypoxia in US waters.

Hypoxia is a condition which sees oxygen levels in the water decrease to a point which stresses or kills the animal and bacterial life living therein.

“The Nation’s coastal waters  are vital to our quality of life, our culture, and the economy. Therefore, it is imperative that we move forward to better understand and prevent hypoxic events, which threaten all our coasts,” wrote Nancy H. Sutley, chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, and John P. Holdren, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, in a letter accompanying the 163-page report, Scientific Assessment of Hypoxia in U.S. Coastal Waters, which was delivered today to Congressional leaders.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, wrote;

The interagency report notes that incidents of hypoxia—a condition in which oxygen levels  drop so low that fish and other animals are stressed or killed—have increased nearly 30-fold since 1960. Incidents of hypoxia were documented in nearly 50 percent of the 647 waterways assessed for the new report, including the Gulf of Mexico, home to one of the largest such zones in the world.

Read more about the research and the report here. But given the increase worldwide of dead zones and oxygen depleted areas one can only hope that some measure of research and policy steps are taken to reverse the trend.

Source: NOAA
Image Source: eutrophication&hypoxia