Reintroduction of the endangered San Joaquin kit fox onto Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1 in California

The Department of Energy's Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1 (NPR-1) is situated about 42 km west of Bakersfield, California. NPR-1 is comprised of 19,120 ha and contains habitat that is important to the endangered San Joaquin kit fox. There are presently portions of NPR-1 that no longer support populations of kit foxes even though the density of dens and the relative abundance of prey appears to be comparable to areas where foxes still exist. Some of these areas appear suitable for foxes, but may be so far removed from breeding pairs of kit foxes that it may take years for young foxes to disperse to the areas and repopulate them. A project to develop reintroduction techniques was implemented and used to introduce kit foxes to areas of NPR-1 that no longer have resident foxes. The soft'' reintroduction technique was used that involved holding foxes in pens during the winter and then releasing foxes from spring to summer. Foxes were held in pens to accustom them to the release site and were released in spring and summer when prey were presumably most abundant. The overall objective of the fox relocation program is to develop techniques to reintroduce foxes onto NPR-1 andmore » to determine the best strategy for imprinting animals to the release site. (SM)« less