After successful fundraising efforts from a dedicated group of local hunters, the NH Wildlife Heritage Foundation secured funding for a comprehensive study to investigate distemper (CDV) impacts on New Hampshire’s furbearers last year. The department initially requested turn-in of carcasses from grey foxes hunted or trapped during the legal hunting and trapping seasons. This year, that study has now expanded to include a desire for carcasses from both Red and Grey Fox, as well as Fisher.
Conservancy curbs coyote abundance with bid to save sea turtles
A Tale of Two Reds: Old-world versus New-world Red Fox
What does the fox say? It depends on which of the 45 subspecies of red fox you ask! As it turns out, an original or “native” red fox subspecies did inhabit montane and glacial areas of North America prior to European settlement; it just wasn’t indigenous to where early settlers were colonizing in the eastern United States.
Penn State continues study of mange in bears, with help from local trappers
Last year, Penn State researchers announced a focus study on the growing problem of sarcoptic mange among the state’s black bear populations. The study has been led by immunologists and entomologists within Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, which has focused on bear ecology, bear movement, and the animal’s immune response amid an increasing mange presence.
New strain of canine distemper confirmed in NH, VT
Pathologists with the New Hampshire Veterinary Diagnostic Lab at the University of New Hampshire have been working on study of CDV in multiple wildlife species for a few years. The disease may already be having an impact on populations of wild mesocarnivores in New Hampshire and New England, including fox and fisher.