But in the wilds of southern Norway, the newly freed foxes may struggle to find enough to eat, as the impacts of climate change make the foxes’ traditional rodent prey more scarce.
Arctic foxes runs off into Hardangervidda National Park on Feb. 8. Conservation biologist Craig Jackson, far left, manages a program to breed the animals in captivity.That question will become increasingly urgent as climate change and habitat loss push thousands of the world’s species to the edge of survival, disrupting food chains and leaving some animals to starve.
With feeding programs, “the hope is that you can perhaps get a species over a critical threshold,” said wildlife biologist Andrew Derocher at the University of Alberta, who has worked in Arctic Norway but is not involved in the fox program. But with the foxes’ Arctic habitat now warming roughly four times faster than the rest of the world, he said: “I’m not sure we’re going to get to that point.”
There are some exceptions. Mongolia’s government, for example, has been putting out pellets containing wheat, corn, turnip and carrots for critically endangered Gobi brown bears since 1985. But for predators living close to human communities, that can be risky. Bears are known to change their behaviour and can associate people with food, said Croatian biologist Djuro Huber, who has advised European governments on the feeding of large carnivores.
But the program is not even halfway to the goal of around 2,000 wild foxes across Scandinavia, which scientists say is the population size needed to be able to withstand low rodent years naturally. Arctic foxes are not the only species in trouble in the Far North. Polar bears are fast losing their hunting habitat as Arctic sea ice melts away. Migrating caribou sometimes arrive in summer pastures only to find that they missed the plant green-up because of a warmer-than-usual spring.
Nine pups were ultimately raised in the outdoor fenced enclosure near Oppdal, a remote site some 400 kilometres north of Oslo. Two pups were kept to be part of future breeding efforts. Then, golden eagles snatched another two just weeks before their Feb. 8 release, leaving only five.For the foxes let loose in Hardangervidda National Park, the challenge is to find food for winter and avoid any predators in the process.