BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — You might not notice them during your walk to class, but they’re there. Endangered San Joaquin kit fox pups have been discovered on the CSU Bakersfield campus.
Taking a walk on campus, you expect to see birds, squirrels, maybe the occasional stray cat. But at Cal State Bakersfield, you can also find endangered San Joaquin kit foxes.
Julian Calvillo, is a Graduate Student Researcher at CSUB, and he says, “The kit fox tends to hang around, especially on campuses. You'll also find them on high school campuses, just like schools in general, with their large green areas and lack of predators. It makes a pretty safe zone. Their primary diet consists of kangaroo rats, not squirrels, but when they can’t take down a squirrel, they’ll eat trash.”
Julian and other researchers have mapped kit fox dens and hunting grounds across nearly all areas of campus — confirming two litters of four pups each.
The project was supported through a grant from the National Wildlife Federation, in partnership with Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. The funding helped universities strengthen conservation efforts on their campuses.
“It came at the perfect time, honestly, because like a month before we got the news that we were accepted, we had completely run out of funding. We could not perform any more extractions or anything because we didn’t have money for it.” Calvillo said.
The grant gives researchers the tools to use DNA testing and community reporting to track where the foxes live. Those findings are now helping shape a new conservation plan that will be shared with CSUB leaders and the Bakersfield City Council as future development is planned. While students go about their day, these kit fox pups are growing up right alongside them — a reminder that even in the heart of the city, wildlife can still thrive.
“The hope is that by establishing where the kit foxes are hanging out, where their pathways are, and how they’re moving between locations or out into wild areas, we might be able to influence the city’s planning committee to adjust the development of new buildings and highways to make it safer for kit foxes to spread out.” Calvillo said.
Who knows — next time you walk through campus, you might just run into one of these little kit foxes yourself.
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