Vermont’s 824 gray fox records lean toward the state’s western and southern lowlands. Chittenden County leads, with Washington, Windham, and Windsor counties close behind, a distribution that favors the Champlain Valley and the Connecticut River corridor over the high Northeast Kingdom.
The fox that climbs
The gray fox is a fox of dense, brushy hardwoods and rocky cover, and it has a trick no other North American canid shares: with curved, semi-retractable claws it scrambles up leaning trees to rest on limbs or escape dogs. Vermont’s records follow that taste for cover, through Green Mountain National Forest, the West Fairlee Wildlife Management Area, and wooded wetlands like the Munson Wetlands, rather than open farm fields.
A winter pairing season
Counts peak in January, the start of the gray fox’s breeding season, when pairs travel together and yapping calls carry on cold nights. A second rise in October matches the season when the year’s grown young leave their parents’ range to find ground of their own.
Status in Vermont
NatureServe ranks the gray fox S5, Secure, in Vermont, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
