By Josh Margolis
FORT BELKNAP, Mont. (NMB) – For the first time in 50 years, swift foxes are scheduled to make a comeback on the Fort Belknap Reservation.
The reintroduction comes after an extensive multi-year research effort that featured input from representatives from the Smithsonian, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Fort Belknap Reservation, state and federal agencies, and local NGOs.
A swift fox is smaller than a typical house cat, weighs around five pounds, and eats small rodents, insects and some small ground birds. The best way to identify the species is by its black-tipped tail.
Swift foxes were declared extinct in Montana in 1969, but have been reintroduced in other parts of the state, as well as southern Canada, over the last several decades.
“They used to be quite common in the Great Plains,” says Hila Shamon, Research Conservationist from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. “But they were brought down to about five percent of their historic range due to rodents and predator control, not always targeted at the swift fox. They slowly expanded again to 40 percent of their historic range.”
The plan is for around 50 mostly juvenile foxes to be transferred from Wyoming to the Fort Belknap Reservation in each of the next five years. The first 40 or so foxes are expected to be brought to the Reservation in late September.
“This reintroduction is building on all the other reintroduction’s that we’ve done over the past 20 or 30 years,” Shamon adds. “So we’ve learned a lot from other efforts. So we didn’t start at zero. We already had a lot of data about swift fox that we used to kind of compensate the planning and protocol for this reintroduction.”
This effort comes 23 years after black-footed ferrets were reintroduced around Snake Butte. The ferrets have now become established in that area of the Reservation.
“We’ve thought about that a little bit,” says Tim Vosburgh, Fort Belknap Tribal Biologist, on potential interactions between the two species. “Our initial release of the swift fox will be separate from our black-footed ferret introduction sites, primarily because swift foxes could kill ferrets. They are not a primary prey item, but it’s possible that could happen. So we’re just going to avoid that initially. If swift foxes happen to venture around some of the bigger prairie dog towns that do have ferrets, then that’ll just be nature taking it’s course. But that’s the plan.”
Vosburgh adds that the swift fox has religious and cultural significance to tribal members.
“People are getting pretty excited about it. I think it’s going to be a pretty big event on the Reservation. I was fortunate enough to be here when they first reintroduced black-footed ferrets, and it was a really neat experience, had elders speak, and a lot of the talks they gave came from their heart. Glad to be able to reintroduce a missing link into the environment, and I think it’s also important for the younger people to experience that.”
Each fox will have a GPS tag to enable researchers to track their movements. The survival rate for the adolescent foxes is estimated at around 50 percent, which should be enough to allow the species to sustain through the first year.
“We expect at least 20 each year to be established pairs and to establish dens and to reproduce,” Shamon says. “So we’re hopeful that people will start seeing them.”
Anyone that spots a swift fox is asked to report them to Vosburgh by calling 353-4801 in order to allow for the foxes to be better tracked.
A two-person film crew will be on the Reservation over the coming months to document the reintroduction for the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. However, due to COVID-19, the film crew will be coming from within Montana’s borders.
The Smithsonian Channel, which is separate from the Conservation Biology Institute, is also filming a show on Northern Great Plains Conservation, of which a portion will be about swift fox reintroduction on the Fort Belknap Reservation.
