![]() ![]() As the situation looked increasingly grave, conservation organizations turned to captive breeding as an eleventh-hour effort in rescuing the species from the brink of extinction in the wild. As few as 40–60 individual foxes remained scattered across Scandinavia in 2000, down from a historical population of ~10,000–20,000. For the Arctic fox, the factors most consequential to their relatively recent decline include excessive hunting around the turn of the 20th century, competition with the red fox (a close relative with a slightly more accommodative lifestyle), and reduced habitat availability as the planet continues to warm (namely, ongoing deterioration of alpine and Arctic terrain that Arctic foxes rely so heavily upon).Įven after protective legislation took effect in Scandinavian countries in the 1920s-1940s, we saw no sign of natural recovery, but instead a continued decline in the following decades. As is also often the case, this is a result of many factors. Like many arctic species, Arctic foxes (scientific name Vulpes lagopus) have suffered sharp declines and are struggling to persist in the wild. ![]()
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