{"id":4767,"date":"2026-03-31T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/?p=4767"},"modified":"2026-03-31T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T11:00:00","slug":"cascade-red-foxes-are-notoriously-reclusive-so-how-did-this-photographer-capture-these-stunning-images-of-the-endangered-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/?p=4767","title":{"rendered":"Cascade Red Foxes Are Notoriously Reclusive. So How Did This Photographer Capture These Stunning Images of the Endangered Species?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Even the scientists who study the animals rarely see them except on camera. But Gretchen Kay Stuart spent a season documenting them up close<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n\n \n
The adult female fox, Shadow, was around 5 months old when Stuart first documented and named her in 2022.\u00a0 \n Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span> \n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
You never forget your first\u00a0glimpse of a Cascade red fox.<\/p>\n
For the wildlife photographer Gretchen Kay Stuart, it happened in 2020, while she was driving up the slope of Washington State\u2019s Mount Rainier. As soon as she spotted the bundle of fur on a snowbank, she says, \u201cI knew she wasn\u2019t a normal fox.\u201d The animal\u2019s coat was pale, tawny and extraordinarily bushy. \u201cShe looked so different and so beautiful. I instantly fell in love, and I photographed her. But I was like, \u2018What is this fox?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
An online fox hunt revealed very little information. The one short write-up she could find was on the website of the Cascades Carnivore Project, a nonprofit founded and directed by the wildlife biologist Jocelyn Akins. A photo made clear that the animal Stuart had seen was a Cascade red fox. Somewhat confusingly, these animals aren\u2019t always red. Their name simply indicates that they\u2019re a subspecies of the standard red fox that lives in the lowlands. Only about 50 Cascade red foxes have been identified, all of them on or around Mount Rainier or nearby Mount Adams. Even Akins, who had been working to protect them since 1999, had rarely spotted one in the wild. \u201cJocelyn told me, \u2018We really only see them on our trail cameras, if we\u2019re lucky,\u2019\u201d recalls Stuart, who took those words as a challenge. \u201cShe just laughed at me, like, \u2018Ha ha! Good luck.\u2019 She didn\u2019t think I would find them. But I found another individual that summer, and the following year, I found another two. I became obsessed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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Two-month-old siblings at play. Kits in the same litter can have different coat colors. The female, on the right, is black and silver; the male is a \u201ccross phase\u201d mix of black and tan.<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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A 5-month-old kit from the 2025 litter spies a chipmunk. Despite their hunting lessons in the den, many young foxes become conditioned to eat leftover human food.<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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The Cascade red fox\u2019s habitat consists of alpine and subalpine meadows, mainly at the treeline. The meadows, like this one in Mount Rainier National Park, are critical for the foxes\u2019 survival because they contain food sources, such as huckleberries, insects, pocket gophers, ground squirrels, voles, snowshoe hares and a variety of mouse and bird species.<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Conservationists usually don\u2019t worry much about foxes. These adaptable animals, in the same family as dogs and wolves, live on every continent other than Antarctica. The ancestors of North America\u2019s foxes are thought to have crossed the Bering Land Bridge from Asia, just as early humans likely did.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But during an ice age that ended 11,000 years ago, these foxes became isolated in separate populations. Some stayed in the lowlands and became the ancestors of ordinary red foxes that amble through suburban neighborhoods, sniffing around garbage cans. Others adapted to cold conditions, and as the climate warmed, they sought refuge at higher altitudes like the Cascade Mountains in what is now Washington State. \u201cThey\u2019re just stuck in these high elevations without the ability to increase genetic diversity,\u201d Stuart says. \u201cThey\u2019re becoming inbred, really. They have a lot of threats that they face.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of the most dire threats come from humans. Foxes spend three to four months raising their kits in dens, sheltered sites, sometimes close to human communities, where food is more plentiful. In June 2025, Stuart was excited to come across a Cascade red fox den at a ski resort, but she noticed right away that the location had many hazards. Indeed, the father ended up being hit by a car. Other members of the family died, apparently after ingesting rodenticide, which ski resorts often use to prevent deer mouse infestations. Akins says the Washington state government has been working with resorts to minimize such hazards, but they\u2019re impossible to eliminate completely. \u201cPeople want to ski,\u201d Akins said. \u201cThat is a challenge for wildlife, as is a road, as is climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n
About a month after the dispiriting news about the ski resort den, Stuart got a call from Mount Rainier National Park. A volunteer had found another Cascade red fox den with three kits, one male and two female. Although Stuart is a photographer, not a scientist, researchers and park rangers knew that she had a special history with the famously elusive creatures. A few years earlier, she\u2019d partnered with the Cascades Carnivore Project on a public awareness campaign, which helped persuade Washington State to list the Cascade red fox as endangered in 2022.<\/p>\n\n
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Stuart heads out for the day.<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Did you know? Following the Cascade red fox<\/p>\n
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Traditional tales\u00a0from\u00a0local\u00a0Native\u00a0cultures\u00a0about clever mountain foxes\u00a0provide\u00a0clues about where the Cascade red fox lived before Europeans arrived.\u00a0<\/li>\n
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The mountains where the Cascade red foxes\u00a0reside\u00a0have a\u00a0higher\u00a0annual\u00a0snowfall than any other place in the United States,\u00a0including\u00a0Alaska, which makes it harder to track the species. Camera traps help, however.\u00a0<\/li>\n
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Stuart’s hand-drawn map of the den, in a small subalpine meadow. The foxes traveled through drainage pipes under trails but also dug at least 17 of their own tunnels, many of them among the root systems of trees.<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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Compared with ordinary lowland red foxes, Cascade red foxes have a smaller build and fur-lined feet that move more easily across the snow.<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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Shadow\u2019s kits play tug of war with a dead weasel. Fox parents teach their offspring hunting behaviors by bringing them dead or almost-dead animals to play with.<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
When Stuart arrived at the new den, she realized she knew the mother. She\u2019d even given the female fox a name: Shadow. Akins, the wildlife biologist, says, \u201cI always thought of foxes as not being identifiable as individuals. With a tiger or a leopard, you can identify it by its spots or stripes. But Gretchen was looking at subtler things. She was able to say, for instance, \u2018That one has a notch in its ear.\u2019 Then we could look at the camera traps and say, \u2018That red fox we saw yesterday is the same one, or it\u2019s different.\u2019 We could get a better sense of how many there are across the population.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The new den site was a sloping piece of land around several big trees. Its main access points were drainage tunnels under a trail, but the foxes built their own tunnels, which allowed them to pop up all over the place. But during Stuart\u2019s first hour at the site, she watched tourists thronging around the fox family. At one point, the mother tried to bring a meal to her kits and was so spooked by the crowds that she ran off without making the delivery. When Stuart reported this to park officials, they swiftly barricaded the area and assigned volunteers to take turns guarding access points from 5\u00a0a.m. to 9\u00a0p.m.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the next few months, Stuart was the only person granted access to the den site. She spent long hours sitting behind a blind, taking photos and jotting down copious notes, documenting how Cascade foxes raise their kits in a den. \u201cWhen I\u2019m living out of my van up on the mountain, my sleep schedule adjusts to sunrise and sunset,\u201d Stuart says. \u201cI was so anxious to be with the foxes that I didn\u2019t want to waste time heating up coffee. So I would just have cold coffee. I ate a lot of snacky stuff\u2014bananas, oranges, apples, granola bars, bread with hummus. And I would just sit and watch and wait.\u201d<\/p>\n
Male foxes are involved in raising and feeding their kits, and Stuart soon realized she knew the father, too. She\u2019d seen him a year earlier out in the back country and named him Crag, because he was so good at scaling the mountains. \u201cHe\u2019s got a bigger white portion on his tail, and he\u2019s got longer legs than a lot of the others,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
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The cross phase fox kit listens for prey as he hones his hunting skills in a meadow. This fox was the one male in the litter. His sisters may return in future years to help their mother raise other litters.<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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Stuart created a detailed record of the foxes in their den. Here, she jots down the kits\u2019 meals for the day, which included two owls.<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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A double exposure image of Mount Rainier and a Cascade red fox kit born in 2025 at Mount Rainier National Park.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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The kits wait for their parents to return with a meal delivery.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Stuart watched Crag make meal deliveries to his offspring. \u201cHe brought the kits a long-tailed weasel\u2014and that was pretty surprising, because long-tailed weasels are vicious. But this dad was a fierce hunter.\u201d The kits didn\u2019t eat the weasel. \u201cThey just played tug of war with it. The funny thing was, the dad was insisting<\/em> that the kits play with this weasel. They would play with it for a while, and then they\u2019d drop it and start playing with each other. He would go and pick it up and bring it back to them and make them keep playing with it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Why was the father fox so enthusiastic about this morbid version of Pop Goes the Weasel? Parents who encourage their kits to play with dead animals are generally teaching them to hunt, though a weasel seemed like an unusual choice, because foxes generally don\u2019t eat them. \u201cMaybe a weasel was the dad\u2019s favorite childhood toy!\u201d Stuart speculates. \u201cI wish I could read their minds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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During her time with the kits, Stuart observed the Wildcat Fire, which started with a lightning strike on August 25, 2025, southeast of the park. Longer, more destructive fires caused by a drying climate are among the many threats that Cascade red foxes must confront.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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A Cascade red fox kit found in early 2025. Its den was located in a construction zone at a ski resort. Foxes sometimes raise their kits near human food sources, but these areas tend to be fraught with danger. This kit died after ingesting rodenticide, and its father was killed by a car.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Weaning red foxes are known to get fluids from creeks and ponds, as well as from food sources like fruits. This weaning fox was seen licking dew from vegetation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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A thriving Cascade red fox kit at Mount Rainier National Park.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gretchen Kay Stuart<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The mother and father took turns bringing food, but every now and then, Stuart got to see the whole family of five together. \u201cOne time, the mom was with the kits, and all of a sudden she ran up the slope and scrunched down really quickly. I looked, and there was the dad. She was being really submissive, kind of rolling around, and he was just sitting there. The kits got all excited and ran over to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stuart hopes she\u2019ll be able to observe another den at the same site next year. Akins says Stuart\u2019s work is a testament to how a photographer can integrate into a research project. \u201cThere\u2019s only so much we can do,\u201d she says of her science team. \u201cWe don\u2019t spend hours and days at dens. We\u2019re covering\u00a0a bigger geographic scope, endlessly collecting scat and setting cameras across the landscape, trying to find out how many Cascade red foxes there are and what their genetic diversity is. I tromp through the woods at top speed checking camera stations, and Gretchen\u2019s like, \u2018God, you walk so fast.\u2019 She has complete patience. And she always has her big lens.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Get the latest Science<\/strong> stories in your inbox.<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
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