Flights of Fancy: South Pasadena Butterfly Garden

When Barbara Eisenstein and her husband, Jim, moved into their South Pasadena home a dozen years ago, it was like many in the neighborhood: an architecturally significant home — a 1910 craftsman — surrounded by a fairly banal garden. The grounds were mostly lawn, albeit studded with mature trees. A few birds perched in the oak, but it wasn’t the miniature nature preserve that encircles their home today.

Over the years, the lawn lost ground and was supplanted by wildlife-supporting native shrubs, including ceanothus and sages, and herbaceous plants such as monkey flower, penstemons and yarrow. Today the garden pulses with vibrant colors, bird song and the slurping and munching of lizards, caterpillars, butterflies and other small dinner guests.

Read the rest of this piece on Arroyo Monthly's website.

AND check out the extensive sidebar (exclusive to the print edition and reproduced here) on how to attract these popular butterflies:

SWALLOWTAILS

In addition to the giant swallowtail, two others frequent local gardens. Named for the tiger-like stripes on their yellow wings, Western Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) will drink from a variety of plants commonly found at nurseries, including lantana and aster family plants such as zinnia. Eisenstein grows native seaside daisy (Erigeron glaucus) and a variety of sunflowers. These swallowtails deposit their eggs primarily on sycamore trees, but they also use poplars, cottonwood, willows and alders.

The anise swallowtail (Papilio zelicaon) is also abundant here, because exotic sweet fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) has become a roadside weed and wildland invader. Skip the fennel; attract it with native plants from the carrot family.

COMMON BUCKEYE

Despite the name, these small brown butterflies are uncommonly lovely. Their wings are adorned with large eye-like spots in a kaleidoscope of blues, yellows, pinks, orange and black. “One of the reasons buckeyes are still relatively common in Southern California is because their caterpillars eat members of the snapdragon family,” says Karner. He adds, don’t panic if your snapdragons get chewed up. The plants will rebound—perhaps growing even more vigorously—and know that “you’re going to get some nice butterflies out of the deal.” Eisenstein’s garden features another buckeye host plant—native monkey flower (mimulus species).

LADIES

Painted lady (Vanessa cardui) is sometimes called the cosmopolitan because it’s thought to be the most widespread butterfly globally. This small orange and black insect migrates into Southern California from Mexico in late winter/spring. It’s the one school kids rear in classrooms. Among the plants that host its young are lupines, mallows—even a vacant-lot plant called cheese weed--and thistles. Native and exotic mallows are easy to grow. Lupines provide a gorgeous blue accent in a native plant garden; they are nature’s complement to orange poppies.

Resident West Coast ladies (Vanessa annabella) will frequent the same plants. Both species sip from sunflowers and buckwheats (Eriogonum species). Eisenstein grows California buckwheat. It sports little orbs of creamy white-to-pinkish flowers that dry to a rust color.

CLOUDLESS SULPHUR

This pretty pale yellow butterfly has become rare in recent years. It depends on native cassia and senna plants. The exotic ones found in conventional nurseries don’t do the trick, according to Karner. So ask your local nursery to order the natives, or visit the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley or Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden.

MONARCH

These charismatic orange and black butterflies only deposit their eggs on milkweed plants. The black, yellow and white-striped caterpillars nurse on the plants’ alkaloid sap, which makes them toxic to predators. Exotic milkweeds are readily available, but some research suggests they leave the butterflies more vulnerable to parasites than the natives do. A good source for milkweed seed is Butterfly Encounters.com.

When positioning milkweeds, keep in mind that some are not beauties, and the voracious caterpillars will defoliate them. It’s the butterflies that dazzle.

GULF FRITILLARY

This pumpkin-colored butterfly, with black and silver accents, is native to Mexico and the Southeastern U.S. The grey caterpillars brandish horizontal orange stripes and black spines. The insect moved into coastal California when its host plants—passion vines—became popular in gardens. Avoid blue crown passion flower (Passiflora caerulea): it’s a weedy plant that can escape gardens and damage wildlands.

Butterflies

Meet Frank. He's a monarch butterfly that my son and I raised. We don't actually know the insect's gender, but that hardly matters to a four-year-old.

Butterfly gardener extraordinaire Connie Day gave us two caterpillars from her garden, which is a certified Monarch Waystation.

We reared them inside (mostly) on a milkweed plant, which provided all they required, except water drops. We placed the plant inside one of those netted cages you use to raise painted ladies.

Some articles I reported recently afforded me the opportunity to engage Brent "the bug guy" Karner of the LA County Natural History Museum in an extended conversation about butterflies. A portion of the discussion was broadcast last weekend on KPCC's Off-Ramp. Check it out.

Lizards

As much as I love lizards, I haven't taken the time to learn much about them. The common ones I've usually assumed to be fence lizards, and left it at that.

On a recent interview for a forthcoming radio story, I carelessly threw that label at this little reptile below. And was quickly corrected by biologist Mickey Long from the LA County Parks Department. It is, in fact, the California subspecies of slide-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana elegans).

Long also pointed out this lovely coastal whiptail lizard (Aspidoscelis tigris stejnergeri). This species moves fast.

If you've got lizards in you garden, they're likely the San Diego Alligator Lizard (Elgaria multicarinata webbii).

Finally, if you like your lizards big, head out to the desert. I saw this Chuckwalla in Joshua Tree this spring. (Definitely not a fence lizard!)

Life Cycles

Adults often talk with kids about how they're growing, how they used to be a baby, how they'll one day be a man or woman. My 3-year-old says he doesn't want to be a man, only a boy. No worries, I say, you'll always be a boy.

It's no wonder, though, he's interested in the cycles of life.

Yesterday, we went with friends to observe the tadpoles at Eaton Canyon. The boys spent nearly 2 hours watching the little commas squiggling in the shallows. They also enjoyed wading in the creek, and examining stones and water bugs.

A couple weeks ago, Eaton Canyon docents had set up a table with magnifying viewers and rubber copies of the tadpole-to-frog cycle. My son looked at them and pronounced, "metamorphosis." (The docents said the tadpoles were either Pacific or California tree frogs.)

We'd been raising painted lady butterflies at home. They burst from their chrysalises last Friday, and we released them the next day.

This year several people told us the caterpillars they got from Kidspace did not emerge. But we've had good luck with the ones we mail ordered from Insect Lore.

More on raising painted ladies.

Mourning Dove

Out back--behind our house--a mourning dove is nesting

sheltered under the 'Roger's Red' grape

Plumped, still and quiet she waits

shiny black eyes wide

Our son these days is still learning about respect

He whines

He screams

He wants his way

Then yesterday

He saw the eggs and the bird sitting so tenderly

Here mother dove, he said, here's seed for you.

Here mother dove, some water for you.

Picture Perfect

My garden is home to many spiders. With the exception of the black widows, I'm happy to see them. But, unlike the birds, they've never set me rushing, breathlessly, to reach for a field guide. Until a couple weeks ago. That's when I sauntered onto my patio and saw the image above.

From a glance at my copy of Insects of the Los Angeles Basin (published by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County), I'm guessing it's a Green Lynx Spider (Peucetia viridans). The book says the adults do not entrap their prey in webs, but rather pounce on them.

Red-Tailed Hawks

TO TAKE A BACKWARD LOOK

These are the days when Birds come back —

A very few — a Bird or two —

To take a backward look.

– Emily Dickinson

HOPE is indeed a thing with feathers. In a landscape entombed in cement, the sight of a wild bird soaring — circling over the freeway, alighting on the towers of high-tension power liness — offers a sudden thrill.

If it’s a majestic bird, it’s probably a hawk.

In urban Southern California the two most common are the litheCooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii), which lurks in yard trees and jets out to nab little birds, and the larger red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis). The latter is the one you see coasting around in lazy circles, buoyed by upwelling currents of hot air called thermals.

Wanting to know more about these birds, I called conservation biologist Dan Cooper, the consultant behind Cooper Ecological. Cooper has been observing LA birds since he was a teen. He’d know where to find a red-tail.

He took me to the Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery, which dates back to the 1880s. As we strolled among century-old gravestones and towering pines, Cooper pointed out that the West Adams area is one of the most densely populated parts of the city. “This cemetery is one of the few big green patches. Any one who’s been down here knows it’s solid urbanization.”

It’s not a place you’d expect to see a lot of wildlife, I said.

“There’s not a lot here,” he agreed, “but a few things that have adapted and we just saw one, the western bluebird. The common birds here are going to be house finch, mourning dove, and [European] starling.”

But as we drove in, Cooper had spotted a red-tailed hawk perched atop one of the pines. So, binoculars in hand, we went looking for it.

“They like tall trees to place their nest,” said Cooper. “And they’ll often roost in tall trees, sitting right at the top. But when they hunt, they hunt by circling and soaring around, diving down on things; they’re not sit and wait predators.”

How do they hunt?

“The adults will circle,” explained Cooper. “When they see something, they nose dive. Just before they hit the ground, they’ll pull up, stick out their feet and land on their prey and squish it on the ground, and kill it with one hit–they land on it with their talons extended. After they land, they’ll fan their wings out a bit, take off to a perch with the prey in their feet and start pulling it apart with their beak.”

In addition to favoring cemeteries and other places where tall trees skirt open areas, red-tail hawks also seek out trees rooted on hillsides or even slight rises like the one the Rosedale Cemetery blankets. “You think of LA as being flat,” said Cooper, “but there are actually these old ridges and little hills all through the city. And birds still do select for this topography. In the depressions, where you have a lot of sycamore trees, you’ll see riparian species, like red-shouldered hawk, are still there.”

Cooper can identify birds flitting by so fast that most people barely see them. He pointed out darting swallows and a black phoebe perched on a headstone (a stand-in for the boulders the bird evolved with). But the hawk was eluding us.

Red-tailed hawks are native to the LA basin. Some are resident; others drop in for the winter. Before the ranch era, nesting and roosting trees were far less common in the area. “The hawks may have nested in sycamores where Echo Park Lake is or MacArthur Park is,” said Cooper, “then foraged here on the plain.” As people planted eucalyptus and other large trees, the hawks moved in.

As human development proliferated, so did introduced species such as theeastern fox squirrel, rock doves–a.k.a pigeons—and possums. “We’ve have garbage all over the city, squirrels eat our garbage,” said Cooper, “So we have this inflated prey base. If every one fed their cats inside, we wouldn’t have possums, squirrels, and rats everywhere. We’d have a lot lower population of prey for hawks.”

Click on the image to be taken to the US Fish and Wildlife Service forensic laboratory

An echoing “CHEEeeev” pierced the sky above us. A brown bird with broad wings spanning four feet glided past, its rust-colored tail fanned. “That’s a red-tailed hawk,” said Cooper. The bird circled, cutting in front of a distant airplane, then disappeared behind a tree.

A few minutes later the hawk was back in view—with a mate. It folded its wings into its body and plummeted, headfirst. Then the bird pulled up—as if that death dive was just a joke–and joined the other hawk. The two zigzagged in unison, yellow legs dangling, giving the impression of a pair of hang gliders.

“That’s their courtship,” said Cooper.

“What’s the deal with the dangling legs?” I asked.

“It means I like you,” Cooper guessed. “I like your style.”

It was spring, the birds were courting, so we searched for a nest. No luck.

A couple days later, I met Cooper on a suburban road in La Habra Heights. A large bowl of sticks was nestled in a two-story eucalyptus. Squinting into some binoculars I saw two motley young hawks—downy heads and partially feathered bodies—preening their newly sprouted wing feathers. (A sibling lay in the nest.)

One of the juveniles tottered to the nest’s edge, gingerly unfurled its wings, and looked down.

Cooper told me that a red-tail’s first flight is really a hazardous jump. “They’ll sort of flop to the ground,” he said. “At that point really vulnerable to being eaten by cats and coyotes, or just killed in the fall. But they do have a little foliage between them and the ground so they may hit the crown of one of these [native] walnut trees.” The fledglings will flap and crash around nearby trees until they learn to fly.

The young hawk apparently thought the better of it and stepped back from the edge. A good decision considering its parents soon returned. The big babies plead for food with a breathy calls sounding something like pweese, pweese, pweese!

As the female—the bigger of the two adults—wheeled around the nest, Cooper told me, once the young birds fledged, they would leave the area. “They might stay a few weeks, but eventually they’ll disperse,” he said, “find their own mate, and set up shop somewhere else–maybe in the Puente Hills, maybe somewhere far away. It’s pretty amazing where these birds will make a home.”

This web story first appeared on Chance of Rain. Thanks to editor Emily Green.

Click here for an earlier audio version from KPCC's Off-Ramp.

Tale of Two Squirrels

Take a look around your neighborhood these days and you'll probably see this squirrel busily collecting acorns and other nuts. It will bury them and dig them up in winter and spring.

I've watched some amusing yelling matches between squirrels and scrub jays. The squirrels swoosh their tails furiously and scream. (The more fluid, back-and-forth tail waving is an amorous gesture, according to Jim Dines, a mammalogist with the Natural History Museum of LA County.) Dines says, "Jays are particularly intelligent--they're related to crows--and will watch where the squirrels are burying their nuts so they can steal them later."

These are a few of the tidbits I learned reporting the following story on native and nonnative squirrels in the Los Angeles area.

NATIVE GRAY

Who hasn’t watched their backyard squirrels scurry along power lines, spiral up and down tree trunks, whip their tails and holler “chkk-chkk-chkk” at trespassing scrub jays?

Now that autumn trees are full of acorns, the antics are in overdrive.

Surprisingly, though, the squirrels leaping from bough to bough in urban Los Angeles aren’t native.

Before urbanization, trees were far less common in the Los Angeles basin. Ground squirrels burrowed into the earth, but the native arboreal squirrel lived in mountainous areas.

The story continues on Chance of Rain.

The Big Blue

I've launched a new column for this blog's sister site, Chance of Rain. Edited by Emily Green, the weekly rambles explore nature in and around urban Southern California. Here's a taste with a link to the full story:

THE DINOSAURS are gone. So too the mammoths, saber-toothed cats and short-faced bears. Even California’s mascot, the grizzly, no longer roams the state. Megalopolis has replaced megafauna. Yet the largest animal ever still graces the California coast. This summer, I went looking for it.

The story continues on Chance of Rain.

Amazing Amphibian Pets

I'm not one for taking online quizzes. I could not resist, however, to try the What Kind of Frog Are You? survey on AllAboutFrogs.Org. I'm not sure how preferring butter to margarine equates with being a nocturnally hooting, toxin-secreting amphibian, but I'm still chuckling at my result: Oriental fire-bellied toad.  
At my house we have five pets. One goldfish, named Pumpkin Pie, and four Bombina orientalis (i.e. Oriental fire-bellied toads). They're named Steinbeck, Stegner, Emily Dickinson, and Joan Didion. 
These two-inch amphibians are excellent pets! They are incredibly easy to keep. We've had the toads for five years, leave them unattended while we're away, and haven't killed them yet. We feed them crickets twice a month; clean their tank when it looks nasty. They thrive. They coo sweet hooting sounds at night--okay, it's not so cute if you're sleeping near them. 
Despite the designation "toad," these amphibians are mostly aquatic and need water. Fill the bottom of a tank with enough water to cover their bodies, but not so much that they can't keep their heads above it. Provide little "logs" that they can rest on and hide under. (They also like to hide in and around vegetation, real or fake.)
Just don't handle them unless you need to. Their bellies secrete a toxin that can irritate your skin, albeit a mild one. (Just wash your hands if you touch them.) 

According to my froggy quiz:

These colorful toads are very active and fun for beginner pet owners. They enjoy spending their day swimming and singing with other frogs of their species and become more active when not alone. Weird fact: Firebellied toads cannot extend their tongues like other toads or frogs. To feed, they must leap forward and catch their prey with their mouths. After they have grabbed a cricket or worm with their mouth, they usually use their fore-arms to help stuff food the rest of the way in. Then they squish their eyeballs down in their heads to push the food into their throat.

Observing frogs seems to me to be an essential childhood experience. But it's getting harder to find them in the wild. Southern California's mountain yellow-legged frogs, red-legged frogs, and arroyo toads are endangered. Conservation biologists say nearly one-third of the world's amphibians are threatened with extinction. 129 may have gone extinct since 1980.  Habitat loss, disease, pollution, predation by nonnative species, and UV radiation are among the culprits. A recent study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN) concluded climate change could wipe out more than half of all amphibians. 

One way to protect aquatic life is not to use pesticides in your yard. This tip sheet from the US Fish and Wildlife Service offers several ideas for keeping your garden environmentally sensitive. 

Turtles Get Around

The Santa Monica Mountains are a refuge for many species that used to be common in LA County, but now face uncertain futures. One is the western pond turtle. Rosi Dagit, a biologist with the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, studies them. She says, "Who knew turtles lead such soap opera lives." Here's my report. 

Cute and Scary

It Isn't Easy Being Green--or Amphibious

For the last month, my husband and I sewed our son a froggy Halloween costume. Doggedly we stitched--ripped--and re-stitched. We argued over the meaning of those "Simplicity" pattern instructions. But we did it, and felt proud.

As soon as I put it on him, he ripped the webbed-foot fabric off his Crocs (admittedly, my shortcut version of the pattern). He refused to wear the hood--the most froggy part of the costume. 

Nevertheless, we enjoy seeing him yellow-bellied. We have pet frogs (tiny toads, actually), and I love all things amphibious. For one, they're cute. And, two, these little guys are bellwethers of the health of our planet. As you probably guessed, what they're telling us isn't pretty. 

The Global Amphibian Assessment says nearly one-third of the world's amphibians are threatened with extinction. 129 may have gone extinct since 1980.  Habitat loss, disease, pollution, predation by nonnative species, and UV radiation are among the culprits. 

A recent study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN) concluded climate change could wipe out more than half of all amphibians. 

But you can still enjoy learning about frogs.  Check out National Wildlife Federation's FrogWatch, Save The Frogs, AllAboutFrogs, and Jumping Frog Institute. 

Among my favorite local--and imperiled--amphibians is the Arroyo Toad. Here's my radio story:

A third of our planet’s amphibians are threatened with extinction.  In southern California, habitat loss and predation by non-native species has imperiled two of our frogs, a salamander, and the Arroyo Toad.  The toad has lost more than 75 percent of its habitat.  And, as KPCC’s Ilsa Setziol reports, it faces an uncertain future.

(sound of a creek)

SETZIOL: Just before sun down, in the Angeles National Forest, Little Rock Creek is darkening in the shadows of a steep canyon.  The fading amber light catches the creamy blossoms of tall yucca plants, making them glow like candles. 

(splashing)

SETZIOL: Biologist Ruben Ramirez crosses the creek.

RAMIREZ: In southern California generally you’re going to have 2 toads you’re going to see most often. The common western toad. And then the Arroyo Toad.

SETZIOL: Little Rock Creek is one of the few places where endangered Arroyo Toads survive.  Ramirez heads upstream a couple of miles, crisscrossing the creek … then sits down on a sandbar and waits. A halo of midnight blue spills over the top of the canyon.  The landscape looks like it’s been stilled by the night. 

(forest night sound fading up)

SETZIOL: But then, a few sounds crescendo into a chorus …

(sound of a chorus of frogs)

RAMIREZ: you’re hearing that two-note, that “grib-bit-grib-it” that’s a pacific tree frog. We’re also going to hear something that’s like “quack” “quack!!”that’s California tree frog.

(quack of tree frog in clear)

SETZIOL: Ramirez uses a flashlight to search out Arroyo Toads. He spots them by the way their eyes shine in the beam of light.  It’s not long before he picks up a two-inch toad about the color and texture of an oatmeal-raisin cookie. There’s something about this creature, with its soft round body, tiny toes and big, liquid eyes, that looks … very friendly.

RAMIREZ: Just a beautiful guy, isn’t he?

(toad call)

SETZIOL: Arroyo Toads spend their days buried in moist sand.  It’s only at night that the adults become active.

RAMIREZ: what he’s doing right now is a release call, because I’m compressing him a little bit on each side as though I’m basically trying to amplex him for breeding. He’s a male so he’s basically saying…get off me, I’m a male not a female. It’s a release call. 

(toad call)

SETZIOL: Amplexus is the technical term for toad nooky.

RAMIREZ: He’ll go down tonight and do some soaking. Definitely forage tonight, get some ants. …And I wouldn’t be surprised that he would find a nice spot and let of some advertisement calls tonight, just trying to get some female’s interest.

SETZIOL: Biologist Ruben Ramirez says when the creek starts to dry up, the toads will burrow deeper into the ground, and slip into a summer version of hibernation called estivation.  They’ll emerge again when it rains.  

(bird and creek sound)

SETZIOL: A hundred miles to the south, in the Los Padres National Forest, biologist Nancy Sandburg dips a small net into the water of Piru Creek.  Inch-long charcoal-colored tadpoles dart under a mat of algae.

(sloshing sound)

SANDBURG: I see a lot of western toad tadpoles 

SETZIOL: But Sandburg says this part of Piru Creek hasn’t been suitable for Arroyo Toads for years … not since the state started releasing water year-round from Pyramid reservoir upstream. That’s allowed a lot of vegetation, including cattails, to grow. 

SANDBURG: Cattails are very effective at collecting silts and what happens is it changes the river from a nice wide open stream bed to a very entrenched channel that’s deep, steep and much too fast a flow for arroyo toads to breed. 

SETZIOL: The extra summer water also supports non-native bullfrogs, which prey on Arroyo Toads.  To help the toads, the California Department of Water Resources is proposing to release water in a way that mimics natural cycles.  Recreational fishermen fear it will mean fewer hatchery and native rainbow trout. But federal biologists say the native fish should do just fine. 

Toad researcher Nancy Sandburg says the natives should be able to survive in tributaries and small pools.  But even with improvements at Piru Creek – She’s worried about the Arroyo Toad’s future.

SANDBURG: As I see it, no recovery efforts have been attempted yet…we’re still trying to prevent loss of existing habitat.

SETZIOL: Creed Clayton with the US Fish and Wildlife Service is more optimistic.  He says there are a number of small steps that could help toads quite a bit.  But there are limitations…

CLAYTON: The recovery plan identifies actions that should be taken to recover the species, but they’re not mandated to happen.  So federal agencies often will pay attention to what’s in a recovery plan and they’ll try to accomplish what they can. But on private lands, private landowner is not obligated to do what’s identified in the recovery plan. 

SETZIOL:This year, Fish and Wildlife sharply reduced the amount of land designated as “critical habitat” for the toads.  It’s in response to a lawsuit by the building industry.  That’s doesn’t necessarily mean more toad habitat will disappear … but Biologist Ruben Ramirez says reducing “critical habitat” does make it harder for the public to know when development is threatening the Arroyo Toad.  

With night settled in at the Angeles National Forest, Ramirez heads back downstream, when he hears a soft buzzing sound coming from the other side of Little Rock Creek.

(toad in clear)

It’s a male Arroyo Toad trying to attract a female. He’s positioned himself in the best place—just above the waterline--to broadcast his call.

RAMIREZ: What fascinates me is because I’ve studied them so long. Every year they continue to prove me wrong. In what I think they’re capable of. I find them moving up slopes where I didn’t’ think they could move.  At least it gives me hope that with a little proper management, we can help them rebound.

(Toad sound)

In the Angeles National Forest, Ilsa Setziol, 89.3, KPCC

(Toad sound)

---

Gimme Shelter

Many Mammals at Risk of Extinction

A report out this week finds almost one in four of the Earth’s mammals are in danger of extinction. The study was conducted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, an organization of governments, NGOs and scientists.

Julia Marton-Lefevre, Director General of IUCN says, “Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our actions….”

IUCN says forty percent of the planet’s mammals are struggling to survive in smaller and degraded habitats.

In California, we have a lot of animal species that don’t live anywhere else … and many of them are also on the edge of extinction. That includes sea otters, red-legged frogs, desert tortoises, San Joaquin kit foxes, peninsular big horn sheep, southern steelhead trout … to name a few. And it includes an animal beloved by visitors to the Channel Islands. Here's my report.

SETZIOL: On a crisp winter afternoon, biologist Mitchell Dennis and colleagues with the National Park Service hop on an eight-seat plane headed for San Miguel Island … home to one of the world’s rarest animals … :

(sound of plane putting down runway)
DENNIS: We have a release going on today. We’ve caught them this morning in their pens and we’re going to fly across the island and release them.
SETZIOL: so these animals aren’t found anywhere else in the world?
DENNIS: No. Nowhere else…

(plane in air)

SETZIOL: As we leave the Ventura coast, we see the four northern Channel Islands rising out of the sea … blue-black, and backlit by a swath of sunlit sea, shimmering platinum and gold. San Miguel looms on the horizon, ringed by fog.

(sound of plane bumping down)

SETZIOL: When we get to Miguel …

(sound of plane bumping down)

SETZIOL: We pick up additional passengers: four little foxes, each about the size of a house cat. They’ve been part of a captive breeding program trying to keep Island Foxes from going extinct.
(location sound of)
SETZIOL: So they look a bit like the mainland grey fox.
DENNIS: they do, they’re about 40% smaller

SETZIOL: The tawny and gray foxes are curled up in portable kennels. They’re silent and motionless, but their eyes are wide open and alert. The biologists put on them on the plane for a short flight to the other side of the island.

(plane sound underneath, then fading out)

SETZIOL: Island foxes live on six of the Channel Islands. Each island has a genetically distinct subspecies of the dainty fox. Ten years ago, the foxes on the northern Channel Islands began to die off rapidly.

The problem??? Feral pigs left over from ranching days attracted golden eagles to Santa Cruz Island. The eagles feasted on an abundant supply of piglets, and evidently found the foxes to be a satisfactory hors d’oeuvre. And the foxes were sitting ducks, so to speak, because they weren’t accustomed to being preyed upon. Biologist Rosie Woodroffe is one of a team of scientists advising the park service on fox recovery.

WOODROFFE: Most animals active in the day are constantly looking for predators, looking up. Foxes are not that vigilant because they spent thousands of years not needing to be vigilant. When you’ve got an animal with no anti-predator behavior at all-there’s very little you can do to convince them to look up!

SETZIOL: On the northwest side of San Miguel Island, the biologists unload the foxes. Then Mitchell Dennis and Debbie Watson listen to beeps transmitted from radio collars around their necks.

(sound of beeping)

DENNIS: that’s the mortality mode on her collar.
WATSON: It’s not supposed to do that.
DENNIS: Shake the collar, but you really can’t shake the fox, though.

SETZIOL: They decide to replace the broken collar.

DENNIS: Hi, sweetie.
WATSON: I’ve got a bandanna
DENNIS: Calms them down to have a bandanna over their face.

SETZIOL: Dennis says the Park Service has been capturing and relocating golden eagles … and it’s hired hunters to kill the feral pigs. So it’s safe enough to put some foxes back into the wild.

DENNIS: And they just do better in the wild. We had 4 females and 6 males released last year, and those 4 females produced at least 9 pups. All of our captive pens where we had 40 to 50 foxes, but we only had 8 pups between all of them.

SETZIOL: But a few--maybe 4--eagles have evaded capture and are still snacking on foxes. Last year, they killed 11. Biologist Rosie Woodroffe.

WOODROFFE: It’s true golden eagles haven’t been seen on San Miguel, but they have in the last few months killed at least one fox on Santa Rosa Island, which is a stone’s throw away. And it only takes one eagle to decide to fly over to San Miguel for a few days and they could take out the whole released population on San Miguel. It’s still on a knife edge whether the foxes will survive in the wild.

SETZIOL: Woodroffe says the park service should at least consider killing some eagles if they continue to evade capture and feed on foxes. But it’s not clear if killing the birds would be easier or cheaper, and it would certainly spark outrage from animal rights groups.

So to ensure the survival of the species, some foxes will remain in captivity. This year, the biologists will let them choose their mates, instead of pairing them by their genetics.

(sound of kennel opening)
WATSON: Ready?
DENNIS: yep.

SETZIOL: With all the collars working, Debbie Watson and Mitchell Dennis, open the kennels. And the captive-born foxes take their first steps into the wild.

WATSON: He’s heading off towards point Bennett!
SETZIOL: running!
DENNIS: Furthest he’s ever run in a straight line. (laughing)

SETZIOL: Three of the foxes bound out of sight. But a young female ventures only a few feet, then hunkers down in the grass looking a bit stunned … and uncertain.

From Channel Islands National Park, Ilsa Setziol, 89.3, KPCC.

---