Habitat Quality for San Joaquin Kit Fox on Managed and Private Lands

Recovery actions for the federally listed San Joaquin kit fox are considered critical to the recovery of threatened and endangered upland species of the San Joaquin Valley of California. Kit fox recovery actions will provide an umbrella of protection for San Joaquin Valley ecosystems and many of those species that require less habitat.

The Endangered Species Recovery Program (ESRP) is conducting a study to estimate the quality of habitat under managed/protected lands and under private ownership. Kit fox populations were delineated from public land survey townships that corresponded to the general area of the named population. The three core kit fox populations were assigned 16 townships each, eight secondary populations were assigned eight townships each, and eight tertiary populations were assigned four townships each.

Within each population unit, habitat quality was assigned to three categories — best, fair, and unsuitable — based on the percentage of appropriate land cover and the ruggedness of terrain. Lands with 90 percent or more of annual grassland or scrub vegetation and with slopes of less than 5 percent were considered the best habitat for the kit fox. Lands with between 5 and 10 percent slopes and more than 50 percent annual grassland or scrubland cover were considered fair habitat excluding the lands classified as the best habitat. The remaining lands were classified as unsuitable habitat.

An identity overlay was done on the habitat class data to classify each category by the management status of the land area. The resulting data consists of six categories of land status and habitat quality. The area and percentages of each category will be used in modeling efforts for alternative farmland retirement strategies for restoring San Joaquin Valley ecosystems.