(bright music)
- The city of Bakersfield, California
traditionally used to be Kit Fox habitat.
Their natural habitat tends to be
arid grasslands and scrublands.
Almost for as far back as folks can remember,
Kit Foxes have been seen in town
and the impression was that these were animals
that were being displaced by development
and they were either gonna die or be pushed out.
But Kit Foxes are canids, and canids in general
tend to be highly adaptive, and so surprisingly
they've done really, really well in that urban environment
other than the mange epidemic,
which has been sweeping through it in recent years.
- We're gonna go ahead and get her in a bag, him or her.
Confirm who it is and then just check the teeth
and the mouth and make sure that that's all good.
Door opened.
I'm working with the Wildlife Investigations Lab
and the Endangered Species Recovery Program
and we're investigating a mange epidemic
that's occurring in Kit Foxes primarily in Bakersfield.
It's a fatal disease that's caused
by a mange mite called sarcoptes scabiei.
It's known as scabies in people and then mange in animals.
Sarcoptic mange infection seems more common
in urban environments for Kit Foxes
and we're trying to understand why.
This one does have some hair loss here on the hips.
You can see that the hair is short and broken.
For now, we are trapping Kit Foxes
and treating them to help prevent mange from spreading.
Kit Foxes have an annual cycle.
The dens that they build, they use
throughout their entire life
and so when you go into an area
and you see a den and you clear it,
the foxes will always try to come back
and so it's really important
to take that into consideration.
- Habitat loss is still the biggest threat
to the species and habitat is still being converted,
primarily to agricultural uses,
but also to urban and industrial uses as well.
When those uses go in,
the foxes can't make dens in those areas.
Usually rodenticides are used in those areas,
so all of their natural prey is eliminated.
The irrigation tends to wash them out of their dens
or flood the dens, so there's nothing to eat,
no place to hide from the coyotes or other predators
so we really don't see them using agricultural lands
to any extent at all.
(bright guitar music)
- The Panoche Valley Preserve was established
as part of a mitigation project
for a solar project that went in here in the valley.
In order for them to permit this project,
they had to set aside land as mitigation.
So once they had identified the land,
we came in and we helped figure out what the cost would be
to manage this land in perpetuity.
- Con Edison development is very committed to its mission
and that is providing clean renewable energy
and so part of what we did at the Panoche Valley project
was to provide this very necessary mitigation land
for the preserve of these endangered species
that were affected by the development.
- For San Joaquin Kit Fox, contiguous parcels
and contiguous acres is really important
because of the size of their home range
and the need for areas for them to disperse into
when they do have pups, so 26,000 acres
that's adjacent to BLM lands; this is a really large,
nice parcel of contiguous lands
that San Joaquin Kit Fox can use.
- The Panoche Valley, which is the center
of the whole project, is dry.
It just went from wild animals to ranching to farming
and now it's back to ranching and solar farms
and preservation of species.
- Panoche Valley and the surrounding area
is considered one of the three core areas
for threatened and endangered species, especially Kit Fox.
This land has been conserved in a mostly natural state.
You can see all these little trails here, burrows and holes,
and there's just a ton of rodent activity going on out here.
- They form an ecosystem of San Joaquin Valley species
that is not in tact in very many places
and this is an in tact ecosystem
that is gonna be managed for years to come.
- I've been proud to be a part of this whole thing,
the ranching and the solar farms, and the species.
It all works together.
If we take care of the land,
the land will take care of us and our cattle
and the species, so it's just been a fine deal.
Not many people have done that.
(bright guitar music)
- This is a real instance where parties can work together
to come to very good solutions
in a way that benefits the people of California
and also preserves areas for species
that might be impacted by our activities.
- [Jaime] Collaboration is key.
No person can do this alone.
Together we can work to have a common solution
that will benefit everybody.
- [Randi] We have an obligation to future generations
to be good stewards of what we've been given
and California is a gift.
And we've got to figure out how to preserve
enough of each of the examples
so that all the diversity we have in California
can be sustained for the generations to come.
(bright guitar music)