The population of the fox dropped to an all-time low of just 70 animals on Santa Cruz Island in 2000 before rebounding to 1,300 foxes now, said Yvonne Menard, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service. Santa Cruz is the largest island.
Populations on nearby San Miguel and Santa Rosa islands have also bounced back into the hundreds after dropping in 1999 to just 15 of the cat-sized animals on each island.
The island fox is only found on six of the Channel Islands, a chain of eight islands, five of which form a national park. Each of the six islands has its own unique fox subspecies because of generations of genetic isolation.
In a five-year period in the 1990s, fox populations plummeted more than 90 percent on the rugged and mountainous islands due to an influx of golden eagles, which preyed on them.The eagles were attracted by hundreds of feral pigs on Santa Cruz Island that also made easy prey and were descendants of pigs brought to the island years ago by ranchers.
The food source allowed the eagles to begin to nest on the island, said Tim Coonan, a biologist with the National Park Service.
Four of the six fox subspecies were listed as federally protected endangered species in 2004, but now biologists say their populations on three of the four islands have recovered almost completely."They are doing unexpectedly well," Coonan said in a phone interview Monday after a tour of Santa Cruz Island to publicize the program's success.
"I don't think anyone could imagine that 12 years after the decline was discovered .... we'd be looking at recovered populations."
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How on earth could the population have grown that fast? And in such a small amount of time!
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