Instead, the Indians kept them as pets and incorporated them into religion and legend. Native people apparently introduced the island fox to the widely separated southern Channel Islands and, in time, populations of all six subspecies flourished. Its diet ranges from insects and mice and other small vertebrates to crabs and wild-growing fruits. Island foxes live as long as ten years and generally mate for life. Following the winter breeding season, females give birth to litters of two to five pups in early April.
Males then shoulder the duty of supplying food to mother and offspring.
By early summer, pups emerge from their dens to begin foraging alongside their parents. Come winter, they head off for life on their own. Nimble tree climbers, island foxes can survive in all types of island habitat. After nine months of studying foxes on the western end of Santa Cruz, Roemer documented his first mortality in April 1994. Then the deaths came more rapidly.