No Washington mammal record is as lopsided as the red fox’s. Of 999 records, 534 come from San Juan County alone, with the San Juan Islands National Monument and San Juan Island National Historical Park contributing 550 between them. Beyond the islands, Pierce and Thurston anchor the Puget Sound lowlands, and a thinner line of records climbs into the Cascades at Mount Rainier National Park.
Two kinds of fox in one state
Washington holds a native high-elevation fox, the Cascade red fox, a rare mountain lineage tied to the open parkland and ridgelines around Mount Rainier and the southern Cascade wilderness areas. The familiar lowland fox of the islands and the Sound has a murkier ancestry, descending at least partly from foxes brought west by people, and it thrives in the farm edges, dunes, and open ground the islands provide.
Most visible with kits at the den
Red foxes are active all year, but Washington counts jump in May and June, the season when kits emerge to play above ground and a den becomes a small spectacle. By late summer the family disperses, counts settle back, and the fox returns to its usual solitary round of voles, rabbits, berries, and beachcombing.
Status in Washington
NatureServe ranks the red fox S1, Critically Imperiled, in Washington, a rank that reflects the precarious standing of the state’s rare native montane fox rather than the widespread lowland animal. USGS NAS does not list the species as nonindigenous here, and the IUCN lists it globally as Least Concern.
Full species profile
