Thanks to strategic efforts, the world’s smallest fox has rebounded from sure extinction in just a decade

The Santa Cruz Island fox has been removed from the Endangered Species List: the fastest recovery of any mammal under the Endangered Species Act. The foxes, which are smaller than house cats, are revered by indigenous people who first inhabited the islands off the Californian coast.

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The introduction to the area of feral pigs, which attracted non-native eagles in return, led to their demise: the population plummeted from 1,500 to fewer than 100. But a group of organisations including The Nature Conservancy, the National Park Service, the California Department of Fish and Game, and the Institute for Wildland Studies, launched the Island Fox Recovery Program, an intensive, science-based recovery effort. In 2000, the partners began bringing 20 foxes into captivity to protect them from predation. Numbers began to increase within the captive-breeding facility, which was designed to mimic their natural environment.

The lessons we’ve learned are used to guide recovery programs for other endangered species around the world