The Catalina Island fox or the Urocyon littoralis catalinae has lived on Catalina Island for at least 4,000 years and will not be found anywhere else. It is one of the six found subspecies of the fox called the island fox. There are many different ideas about how the foxes came to the Island in the first place. One theory is that they came from the mainland by floating across the channel on logs or other debris, usually in stormy weather. Or maybe the fox may was brought to Catalina by the first people to live on the Island. The adult fox weighs around four to six pounds and an infant weighs around one to three pounds. In the very late nineteen hundreds an outbreak of the distemper virus caused the population to plummet from one thousand three hundred all the way down to only one hundred foxes left. In the year two thousand the Catalina Island Conservancy Group teamed up with its partner the Institute for Wildlife studies and started the Catalina Island fox recovery plan. This plan helps the foxes by relocating them, breeding them, and releasing them back into the wild. To help keep track of the foxes they put radio monitoring collars on them to keep track of breeding and population.…show more content… In 2004 The captive breeding program was discontinued. It was after that the United States fish and wildlife studies service declared the catalina island fox an endangered species. After a count of the foxes towards the end of 2013 the scientists estimated approximately one thousand eight hundred foxes on the island.Every year the foxes are captured, counted, vaccinated, and released. The Catalina Island fox is known currently as Catalina Island’s largest terrestrial predator. Scientist are now investigating ear tumors that are affecting the foxes