The island’s foxes have adapted, and are important to our local ecosystem

These issues are not new, and the island’s foxes were the subject of considerable separate research by Pillow and wildlife ecologist Gregory A. Green.

Green, a professor at Western Washington University, collected and analyzed island fox scat samples for DNA tests to determine the island foxes’ ancestry. If DNA tests showed that the island’s foxes were related to the Cascade red fox, which the state Department of Fish and Wildlife listed as an endangered species in 2022, that could have made resources available for their protection. Unfortunately, the island’s foxes, first introduced to San Juan Island in 1914, are descended from Alaskan fur farm foxes.