About 6,000 feet up the south side of Mount Adams, wildlife biologist Jocelyn Akins stumbled upon droppings from a Cascade red fox. She found some more months later, thousands of feet below on the opposite side of the mountain.
Tests revealed it was from the same fox.
In her research that began in the late 2000s, Akins found there were "actually quite few" of the silvery, wide-eyed, pointy-eared creatures in existence. There are no definitive population estimates available, but Akins collected stool samples from 51 individual foxes living between Mount Adams and Mount Rainier.
Last week, the state Fish and Wildlife Commission decided to list the Cascade red fox as endangered.
In the next few years, the Washington state agency will have to develop a recovery plan, describing what needs to be done to prevent this fox from going extinct, said John Lehmkuhl, member of the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission. In the short term, it'll opens up opportunities for further research for the agency's partners.
When Akins researched the fox in a dissertation for the University of California, she learned that Keith Aubry, emeritus scientist for the U.S. Forest Service, was the only other scientist who had extensively studied the subspecies. She began what she called a "PR" effort and founded the Cascades Carnivore Project.
Photographers like Gretchen Kay Stuart have also helped spread awareness of the little-known subspecies' existence.
Early this year, Akins and Mount Rainier wildlife ecologist Tara Chestnut co-authored a draft report that recommended listing Cascade red foxes as a threatened subspecies.
The foxes, which have distinct color patterns that could include red, black and silver, used to call the Cascade Mountains of Washington and southern British Columbia home. Now, according to the report, they only exist in about half of their historical range, primarily the south Cascades.
Chestnut said future research should aim to answer what, if anything, distinguishes the habitat in the south Cascades from the north.
The foxes are one of the top predators in the mountains and important in keeping the population of small mammals in check.
Traditional knowledge and stories reaffirm the foxes' role in the ecosystem, said Skokomish tribal member and Northwest Indian College instructor Alisa Smith Woodruff.
"Foxes are the carriers of our berries, they eat those and distribute the seeds for us. They're controlling the [small mammals] so they aren't running rampant," she said. "It's that connectedness, right? Like, nothing is better than anything and we all have our spots."
The plight of the Cascade red fox may be tied to historical threats, Akins said. They were trapped for their fur. Their habitat has been fractured by roads, including Interstate 90.
And today, the Cascade red fox may be losing habitat to a warming climate.
When the last glaciers of the Ice Age retreated, red foxes followed the freezing conditions up into the Western mountains: the Rockies, the Sierras and the Cascades, Aubry said.
While other species, like elk, deer and goats migrate to lower elevations in the winter, the foxes brave the harshest conditions. They like high subalpine elevation forests and meadows.
In a warmer winter, rain will fall and freeze over fresh snow leaving a firm surface for coyotes — the foxes' predators — to travel on. That freezing rain can also make it harder for foxes to dive into the powder to reach prey, and for their prey to survive.
While there are many hypotheses about what could be threatening the foxes, there's just not enough definitive research to point to if or why the populations are in decline, Aubry said.
The state listing this fox as endangered could change that. Aubry said, "Hopefully, it'll spur additional work that will help elucidate some of these mysteries."
