Whitehorse Daily Star

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PLAYTIME – Cat toys are helping the little red fox pass the days at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve. Photo courtesy YUKON WILDLIFE PRESERVE

Fund-raiser launched to keep baby fox in Yukon

The puppy which turned out to be a little red fox has been flourishing at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve since being discovered in April near Marsh Lake.

By Rhiannon Russell on July 18, 2014

The puppy which turned out to be a little red fox has been flourishing at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve since being discovered in April near Marsh Lake.

The feisty, three-month-old fox spends its days in a holding pen playing with cat toys.

Its stay at the preserve was never intended to be permanent, though – the facility north of Whitehorse doesn’t have an enclosure for red foxes.

Executive director Greg Meredith and his staff were looking for a proper home for the fox. They found an accredited family-run facility in Ontario which already hosts a couple of the animals.

“It’s a great place, but they’ve got a smaller enclosure for red foxes,” Meredith said in an interview Thursday.

“We’re really not the best people to evaluate other facilities’ enclosures because we’d like to see, of course, two acres or whatever .... We like our spaces bigger.”

The preserve’s staff came up with the idea of a campaign to raise money for a fox enclosure, which would set the organization back by $20,000.

Construction alone would likely cost about $5,000, so staff have volunteered to build it.

“We arrived at a figure of $10,000 that the staff would try to raise,” Meredith said. “If they were to try to raise that, then somewhere in my budget, I would find another $5,000 so we could go ahead and build this structure. The challenge is on.”

There’s one condition. The fund-raiser ends Aug. 31. If the full amount isn’t raised by then, the fox would move to Ontario, and the money would go with him to his new home.

Meredith is optimistic about the fund-raising goal.

“There’s a lot of interest in the community interest about this little guy,” he said.

“I’d love to see a couple companies challenge each other, because it’s going to be tough to raise that much money at $20 a time.”

Minutes after a radio interview Thursday morning, Meredith said, the preserve received a $500 donation.

If the enclosure gets the go-ahead, he could see the preserve acquiring more red foxes and developing a specific program.

“There are a lot of positive educational and interpretative benefits from having red foxes as part of our program,” he said.

“You can have a lot of interpretive things: what the difference is between a red fox and an Arctic fox and what the various foxes eat and where they are in the food chain and all that kind of stuff.”

The preserve doesn’t have red foxes, other than some wild ones living around it.

“Maybe if we had put him in a wild fox den very, very early on, maybe he could have been brought up wild,” Meredith said. “But that’s a big ‘if.’”

The black bear cubs orphaned this week have also been staying at the preserve until a permanent home is found for them.

Their mother had been knocking over garbage bins and eating trash in Copper Ridge. Conservation officers relocated her and the cubs, but they returned. Since she was showing no fear of humans, she was shot.

The two energetic cubs are being kept in a horse trailer for now.

“These little black bears are in there hanging off the ceiling,” Meredith said. “Climbing up aluminum does not slow them down.”

To donate, visit canadahelps.org/dn/16008.

Comments (4)

Up 7 Down 0

Dianne Ferris on Dec 28, 2014 at 11:43 am

Orphaned animals deserve to live, as do humans. I have raised 10 raccoon orphaned young and sent them to a wildlife rehabilitation group in Ontario to be rehabbed back into the wilderness. There are many people out there who love and respect wild creatures and that's how it should be. Here's one of the groups in Ontario that are totally run by donations and volunteers http://aspenvalley.ca/aspen/ (They have 1,000 acres of land and almost every animal you can think of - native to Canada - has been rehabbed here).

Up 15 Down 8

Priorities folks on Jul 21, 2014 at 9:28 am

... we can't even figure out how to help the homeless yet we rally around saving a fox ... good grief.

Up 12 Down 11

Josey Wales on Jul 20, 2014 at 11:08 am

So now we need money to raise a lil' fox the Yukon has gobs and gobs of. Folks I like critters more than the average human...but this is redefining stupid! Go traditional...feed it to the cubs you soon will lobby for too.
I can see it now more grants given to this "association" to morph into a zoo complete with yet more staff from Alberta.
Can nobody see the slippery slope we are resting on meddling with EVERYTHING after it has been "personified".
Critter live, critter die as do we.
Socializing the animal kingdom like we do...is completely irresponsible.
what next social workers for homeless voles and pay out settlements to displaced Flickers.
....really!

Up 15 Down 4

Local Drifter on Jul 19, 2014 at 4:01 pm

Let's call him Trevor

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