Cascade red fox
A rare, high-elevation red fox subspecies found almost nowhere but Mount Rainier's subalpine meadows, in red, black, or mixed cross-colored fur.
Cascade red fox at a glance
Vulpes vulpes cascadensis KAS-kade RED foks; Vulpes vulpes cascadensis is VUL-peez VUL-peez kas-kuh-DEN-sis
- Type
- Mammal · canid
- Diet
- Omnivore
- Size
- Roughly the size of a small dog: red foxes generally run 6 to 15 pounds (2.7 to 6.8 kg), with a body about as long as a baseball bat plus a tail nearly as long again. Cascade red foxes are considered a smaller-bodied subspecies, built for a cold, lean, high-elevation life.
- Lifespan
- Wild red foxes generally live 2 to 4 years; no separate lifespan data have been published for the Cascade subspecies specifically.
- Conservation
- Endangered (Washington state listing, 2022)
Eats pocket gophers, snowshoe hares, songbirds, huckleberries and other berries, insects
A Cascade red fox hunts alone through subalpine meadows and forest edges, pouncing on pocket gophers and hares, taking birds and insects when it can, and switching to huckleberries and other berries when they ripen.
Should you worry?
Not dangerous, but a real problem: some Mount Rainier foxes near Paradise have learned to approach cars and people for handouts, which is exactly why rangers ask everyone not to feed them. A begging fox is at much higher risk of getting hit by a car. Watch from a distance and never offer food.
Rangers at Mount Rainier have a word for a fox that no longer runs from a stopped car: habituated. Near Paradise, one will sit at a pullout with its tail curled over its feet, watching a window the way a dog watches a treat bag, worn down over enough handouts that people stopped registering as danger.
Feed one of these foxes and you can’t even guess what color the next one born nearby will be. A single litter of Cascade red fox pups can come out red, black, and a mixed rust-and-gray cross pattern side by side, three different-looking pups born to the same parents. The subspecies survives almost nowhere outside Washington’s southern Cascades, descended from foxes that crossed the Bering Land Bridge more than 300,000 years ago and shaped into a smaller, cold-hardy mountain line sometime during the last ice age.
Washington listed the whole population as endangered in 2022, after more than a decade of monitoring found it surviving only in scattered numbers south of Interstate 90. A fox that begs at a bumper for a handout is a fox standing in the road, and the safest photo anyone gets of a Cascade red fox is the one taken through a windshield, from a car that never stopped rolling.
Did you know?
- The same litter of Cascade red fox pups can come out red, black, or a rusty-and-gray 'cross' pattern, three different-looking foxes with the same parents.
- Its ancestors reached North America across the Bering Land Bridge over 300,000 years ago; the mountain-adapted Cascade fox split off from lowland red foxes during the last ice age.
- Washington's Fish and Wildlife Commission listed the Cascade red fox as an endangered species in September 2022, after monitoring going back to 2008 found it surviving only in scattered numbers south of Interstate 90.
Common questions
Is the Cascade red fox dangerous?
No. It's a small, shy wild animal. The real risk runs the other way: foxes that get used to being fed near Paradise are more likely to be hit by cars.
Where would you actually see one at Mount Rainier?
Around Paradise or Sunrise, in subalpine meadows and forest edges, most often at dawn, dusk, or as tracks crossing fresh snow.
Why are there different colored Cascade red foxes?
Red foxes carry genes for three color patterns, red, black, and a mixed 'cross' pattern, and all three can show up in the same litter of pups.
Is the Cascade red fox endangered?
Washington state listed it as endangered in 2022. It survives only in scattered numbers in the southern Washington Cascades, including around Mount Rainier.