WOODS, WATERS, AND WILDLIFE
Red fox, gray fox, and wily coyote They may seem similar, but each competes differently as a top-tier predator. STORY AND PHOTOS BY W.H. “CHIP” GROSS
W
hen wild animals face a change in their environment, they have three options: adapt, migrate, or die. When those animals happen to be three top-tier predators attempting to occupy the same habitat, things can get dicey. Red and gray foxes have been living alongside one another in what today is the Buckeye State for hundreds of years. Issues started, however, during the last half-century, when eastern coyotes arrived and quickly filled all 88 counties. According to Katie Dennison, furbearer biologist for the Ohio Division of Wildlife, an annual survey indicates “a long-term declining trend in red fox and gray fox sightings since the survey began in 1990, which is indicative of a decline in both fox populations in Ohio. However, the trend does appear to have leveled off during the past five to seven years.” Dennison adds that the survey relies on deer-bowhunter observations, so “is biased toward describing fox population trends in rural areas.” The severe drop in fox numbers is no doubt due, at least in part, to competition by coyotes. As a result, are foxes — especially red foxes — now denning closer to human habitation to avoid coyotes, which are more sensitive to human activity?
Coyotes have been muscling in on the habitats of both red and gray foxes since the last half-century and are now in all 88 counties in Ohio.
12 OHIO COOPERATIVE LIVING • JANUARY 2021
The evidence, thus far, is mainly anecdotal, but Dennison knows of at least one recent scientific study in the Buckeye State, conducted on Cleveland Metroparks properties, that has looked at the possibility. “There has been some research in Ohio that has looked into habitat partitioning between red fox and coyote, and it does indeed find support for red fox possibly finding ‘refuge’ from coyotes by using more highly developed areas.”
