The red fox is Louisiana’s fox of open ground and settled country. Of its 223 records, 131 come from East Baton Rouge Parish alone, with smaller counts through St. Tammany, Rapides, and Caddo and records at places like Kisatchie National Forest and Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve.
A hunter of edges, not deep woods
Red foxes make their living along the seams of the landscape: field margins, pastures, roadsides, and the brushy edges of suburbs, where mice, rabbits, and insects are easiest to catch. They take readily to country broken up by farms and yards, which is why the Louisiana record clusters around settled parishes rather than the state’s great swamps, and why the rusty coat and white-tipped tail so often flash across a lawn at dusk.
A spring denning pulse
Red foxes are year-round residents, but Louisiana records surge in March and April. Pups are born in late winter in a dug-out den, and by spring the parents are making constant food runs while the young foxes play at the den entrance, one of the few times this mostly nocturnal animal is easily seen.
Status in Louisiana
NatureServe ranks the red fox S4, Apparently Secure, in Louisiana, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
