Snow Depth a Key Factor in Regional Fox Populations

by Maeve Gifford, University of New Hampshire
March 01, 2024

Known best for their cunning behavior, red foxes play key ecological roles within their environments and in disease pathology. The animals disperse seeds for plant and tree regrowth in New England forests through their scat and help limit disease spread by controlling rodent species—such as mice and chipmunks—that can carry bacteria that causes Lyme disease. Maintaining fox populations in northern New England is important to resilient ecosystems, but little is known about why their numbers fluctuate. Recent research from the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station examined how red fox populations during Maine winters are affected by competition from coyotes, weather variability, and the presence of snowshoe hare prey—factors key to developing effective land management strategies in the region.

“It’s important to study red foxes because they play several critical ecological roles and are an important game species,” explained Andrew Butler, a Ph.D. candidate in the Natural Resources and the Environmental Studies program at UNH’s College of Life Sciences and Agriculture. “In ecology, many studies focus on only top-down or bottom-up factors. However, many species, such as red foxes, must find a way to navigate both pressures to survive, making them a good model to investigate how these factors simultaneously influence such species.”

Keep reading: https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/snow-depth-key-factor-new-england-fox-populations

Read the Ecosphere paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.4706