Passport to Texas

Fox Finders of TPW TV Series on PBS

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This is Passport to Texas

The swift fox is one of the smallest species of the wild dog family in North America.

We’re working with Texas Parks and Wildlife to survey for swift foxes in a nine county area in the Texas Panhandle that falls within the historic distribution for this species.

Doni Schwalm is a research associate at the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State University. The Texas Parks and Wildlife TV Series follows Schwalm and her team for a segment on swift fox airing this week on PBS.

This species, from what we can tell from historic records was almost gone. We know for sure there has been a big decline historically. About 50 percent of their historic distribution now no longer has swift foxes, and where they do still exist, the population is kind of patchy and so it’s not very continuous. We think that the first and foremost thing that led to these major population declines were historic predator control programs where they were poisoning, kind of indiscriminately for wolves mostly and really just anything, and unfortunately those baits, they’re not specific. And we ended up with a lot fewer foxes that way. Of course they like grassland habitat. The more agricultural development there is, especially just like irrigated farmland, the fewer swift foxes there will be. And finally, primarily because there are no more wolves, there are way more coyotes than there used to be, and coyotes are their highest source of mortality, up to 77 percent of their mortality, so it’s a pretty big deal.

The segment Fox Finders is airing now on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS. Check your local listings.

The Wildlife Restoration program supports our series.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.