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[Clarification (June 14, 2019): The first shot in this video is of San Miguel Island, which is just west of Santa Rosa Island]

After the interviews, we piled into large pickup trucks and climbed 10 miles up the bumpiest and most washed-out roads I have ever seen, before finally arriving at their field site -- an ancient grove of massive old island oak trees near the summit of a desolate peak known as Black Mountain.

One of the restoration project's goals is to study how to slow erosion and keep organic matter like leaves and sticks trapped on the mountainside. They have installed drip irrigation systems, planted native species and installed erosion control devices called wattles, which are basically galvanized wire fencing covered with stretched fabric. The fog wets the fabric, and the moisture drips down to water the plants in the undergrowth. That attracts more vegetation, establishes microbes, and supports both carbon respiration and composting in the soil.

\"If you dig down in this leaf stuff here,\" McEachern said, \"it’s developing this kind of mushy concoction down lower.\" When they started, the land was basically barren rock, she said.

McEachern also pointed out some elderberry bushes that they planted a year earlier. \"Just for kicks,\" she said.

And as we toured the site, a dwarf fox appeared, sat for a while under the shade of one of the massive oak trees, and then wandered on. It's rare to see them this high up on the mountain, one of the researchers said.

Fox versus eagle versus ranger

Though we never did get to see the baby pups, my kids and I got our fill of the dwarf fox parents in our camp site where they darted around during the day. We were warned not to feed them, and to keep our food in the camp's steel boxes. The need for such vigilance acts as a testimony to one of the most successful captive breeding programs of all time.

On the brink of extinction just a few years ago, the Santa Rosa Island fox made a remarkable recovery thanks to a federal protection program, said Laura Shaskey, a wildlife biologist with the National Park Service. The day I met Shaskey, toward the end of the trip, she was coming back from a 5:00 a.m. trip to the far side of the island to trap and tag foxes and track their survival.

Island foxes are a distant relative of the California gray fox, which is found on the mainland. Their dwarfism is a classic trait often seen in isolated populations of island dwellers. Because island resources are limited and may fluctuate year by year, island foxes have adapted to an unusual diet of plants, Jerusalem crickets and a smattering of smaller animals like lizards and island deer mice.

Their size is also an adaptation, Shaskey explained. Smaller animals don’t require a huge caloric intake and may be more likely to survive during lean years. \"Over time, the foxes that were smaller and more adept at finding food are the ones that were going to survive and reproduce,\" Shaskey explained.

All that adaptation almost went for naught two decades ago. Around the time the National Park Service acquired the islands, park staff began to monitor the foxes, and they soon detected a massive decline in the population.

The culprit was a nonnative predator -- golden eagles, which migrated to the Channel Islands after native bald eagles disappeared. Where the bald eagles were mostly marine hunters, golden eagles prey more on land animals. At first, they preyed on the baby pigs and deer fawns that had been imported during the ranching era. But when the island transitioned into a national park and rangers began removing those nonnative animals, the golden eagles turned to the foxes, whose daytime foraging made them especially vulnerable.

Populations plummeted, Shaskey said. \"We were down to 15 individuals on San Miguel Island, 15 individuals on Santa Rosa and just under 70 on Santa Cruz Island.\"

\"PHOTO:
Kevin Schafer/Minden Pictures via Newscom
PHOTO: In this undated photo, an Island Oak forest is shown on Santa Rosa Island, Channel Islands National Park, Calif.
>

The effect of the killings reverberated beyond the foxes, as is often the case in a carefully balanced ecosystem. Because foxes are voracious hunters and a top predator on the island, they were a keystone species. Where their numbers declined, the populations of deer mice and spotted skunks grew very, very high. The exploding mouse and skunk populations then impacted bird populations because those mammals began to excessively forage eggs.

What saved the foxes was a concerted effort by scientists, veterinarians and naturalists from the park service, the Nature Conservancy and other organizations, which led to one of the fastest rebounds of any mammalian species in the history of the Endangered Species Act.

All the foxes on Santa Rosa Island were captured and kept in captivity on the island for eight years, where they were bred to recover the population. At the same time the golden eagles were captured and relocated to their native Northern California, and about 60 bald eagles were reintroduced to the Channel Islands.

\"In just over a decade, the population had rebounded from record lows to, you know, very self-sustaining populations; some record highs in some cases,\" Shaskey said. Historically Santa Rosa Island may have had about 1,400-1,500 foxes. Last year, Shaskey and her colleagues estimated 1,850 foxes on Santa Rosa.

\"They're resilient,\" she said.

Also resilient were my children for putting up with sleeping in tents for a week on a hot and dusty remote island that you need to take a choppy two-hour boat ride to access. On the way home, we saw a kelp forest, dolphins, blue whales, bald eagles and one of the largest sea caves in the world. As we pulled away from dock a loudspeaker voice reminded us, as our welcome back to civilization, \"If you're going to throw up, do it over the side.\"

Editor's Note (June 14, 2019): This story has been corrected to remove a reference that incorrectly called Black Mountain the highest peak on Santa Rosa Island. The highest peak on the island is in fact Soledad Peak.

Inside Science is an editorially-independent nonprofit print, electronic and video journalism news service owned and operated by the American Institute of Physics.

\"PHOTO:
PHOTO: Inside Science
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