Swift foxes are the smallest wild dog in North America, built for open shortgrass prairie with oversized ears that help radiate heat, and Wyoming’s eastern high plains around Medicine Bow National Forest and its cottonwood-lined stream corridors mark some of the last real native prairie the species depends on in the state.
Records cluster from May through August, more than any other stretch of the year, with a complete gap in April, too uneven to describe a clean seasonal window from just 81 total records. NatureServe ranks the swift fox S2, imperiled, in Wyoming, a genuinely different picture from the IUCN’s globally Least Concern status, a gap that likely reflects grassland loss across the state’s eastern plains rather than any difference in the fox’s biology elsewhere.
Full species profile
