Sierra Nevada Red Fox. Courtesy of the USDA

WASHINGTON (MPG) - The Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Dec. 30 for failing to provide habitat protection to endangered Sierra Nevada red foxes in California.

“There’s just no way to save these precious foxes without protecting the places they live,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center. “The human footprint has gotten so huge that not even the high-elevation and snow-covered mountains where these foxes live are safe.”

In 2021 the Service protected the fox population found in the vicinity of Sonora Pass under the Endangered Species Act but declined to designate critical habitat, arguing that since habitat destruction wasn’t the main cause of the foxes’ endangerment there was no need for habitat protection.

Although the foxes are severely threatened by climate change and their dangerously small population size, they also face threats to their habitat from snowmobiles and other recreation, development, and livestock grazing. Critical habitat would help address these threats and provide valuable information for land managers seeking to recover the species.

The foxes once ranged throughout the high country of the Sierra Nevada in forests and alpine meadows, but today have dwindled to fewer than 50 individuals in a small area of Stanislaus National Forest and a couple of surrounding national forests.

The Service’s 2021 decision denied critical habitat under Endangered Species Act regulations issued by the Trump administration in 2019. Those regulations threw open the door to denying habitat protection to many species. Unfortunately the Biden administration relied on the rules to deny the fox critical habitat and retained the provision in an updated version of the regulations. The Center and partners are separately challenging both versions of the rules.

“People are harming the natural world in complex and interconnected ways that are devastating to animals like the Sierra Nevada red fox,” said Greenwald. “We’re in an extinction crisis that urgently demands action. We don’t expect to see that action under the Trump administration, but we’ll keep pushing as hard as we can.”

Sierra Nevada red foxes are uniquely adapted to living in snowy, cold environments with small body size, a thick coat, and fur covering the pads of their feet, allowing them to stay warm and travel over snow. They come in three color phases — a classic red phase, a black phase with silver tips to the fur, and a cross of the two. In all phases, they have a white-tipped tail and black markings on the back of their ears.

The Center petitioned for protection of the fox in 2011, resulting in protection of the Sierra Nevada population as endangered. The Serviced denied protection to a separate population of the fox that lives in the Cascades with small populations found at Lassen Peak, Crater Lake, the Three Sisters and Mt. Hood in California and Oregon. The Center again petitioned for this population in February 2024.

In October the Center also petitioned for closely related Cascades foxes, who only live in Washington’s Cascade Mountains.