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　California's 'Dwarf' Fox Is Back From the Brink

　　Fox has one of the fastest recoveries in the Endangered Species Act's history.

A Channel Islands 'dwarf' fox on Santa Cruz Island.

Photograph by Rich Reid, National Geographic

　　Ker Than in Santa Cruz Island, California

　　Kneeling in the dirt beneath a sycamore tree, Christie Boser cradled theendangered island fox in her lap, firmly gripping its neck with a gloved hand while using the other to slip on a green blindfold that would keep the animal calm.

　　It had been captured the night before, lured into a metal cage by the scent of cat food and the promise of an easy meal. After weighing the creature, Boser ran a flea comb through its reddish-gray fur, massaged and petted its lean body, and probed its mouth to gauge its condition.

　　"All his claws look nice and pretty ... but he has a broken canine," said Boser, a scientist with the Nature Conservancy and the restoration manager on Santa Cruz Island, the largest in the chain of eight Channel Islands off the coast of California.

　　After a brief exam, Boser released the yearling fox, which scampered off and vanished into some nearby shrubs.

　　It wasn't too long ago that such a routine checkup was a lot less commonplace. One of America's rarest mammals, found only on six Channel Islands, theisland fox was driven nearly to extinction in the 1990s by predatory golden eagles. By 1999, there were only about 85 island foxes left on Santa Cruz Island, while nearby San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands were each down to about 15.

　　Today, the species is on the verge of a dramatic recovery—one of the fastest in the history of the Endangered Species Act—with nearly 2,500 on the Channel Islands.

　　"They were listed as endangered in 2004, and they're pretty much ready to come off that list at this point," said Timothy Coonan, a biologist with the U.S. National Park Service (NPS), which works with the Nature Conservancy to preserve resources on Santa Cruz Island.