Gray foxes are declining across Indiana, likely due to disease and the highly fragmented landscape in most of the state.
“Trappers were the first to sound the alarm,” said TWS member Tim Hiller, executive director and founder of the Wildlife Ecology Institute, a nonprofit research and education organization.
The problem isn’t restricted to Indiana, Hiller said. Researchers at a furbearer workshop from surrounding states like Ohio, Illinois and Iowa were talking about the problem several years back, but nobody could get funding secured for a multistate survey. Hiller received funding from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) and other sources for a comprehensive project on gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) in the state.
In a study published recently in Wildlife Monographs, Hiller and his team, which included researchers from Luther College in Iowa and the IDNR, sought to understand, among other things, gray fox survival, reproduction and how the canids used the land and resources…