Arctic fox in 4400km odyssey over sea ice

An Arctic fox has crossed sea ice to North America, covering 4400km from the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard to Canada.

An Arctic fox has crossed sea ice to North America, travelling 4400km from the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard to Ellesmere Island, Canada.

The young vixen had been caught in July 2017, in Svalbard, one of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas, and researchers fitted a transmitter as part of a study.

It remained on that stretch of coastline for nearly a year. Then, having crisscrossed between areas of open water and reaching a point on the northeast coast where the sea was frozen, it set out on to the ice on March 26 last year, heading northeast.

A day later it wheeled to the north, then west, crossing a little more than five degrees south of the North Pole.

It was at that latitude, in the late 19th century, that Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen noted with surprise: “The track of an animal in the snow. It was that of an arctic fox. What in the world was that fox doing up here out on the wild sea?”

 

It appears it may have been migrating to another continent. The vixen tracked by the Norweg­ian Polar Institute stopped twice in early April. In their ­research paper, Eva Fuglei and ­Arnaud Tarroux say it stopped at a place where the sea ice sometimes opens up in large cracks, and crustaceans, seals and whales often surface. It may have stopped to feed there, or had to wait until the cracks sealed.

On April 16 it reached northern Greenland, then crossed the Greenland ice sheet to Ellesmere Island, on the northern tip of Canada, on June 10.

By July 1, it had travelled more than 4240km, one of the longest journeys recorded for the species.

On average it covered nearly 48km a day; at top speed it managed 154km in one day.

Initially, “we didn’t think it was true”, Ms Fuglei said.

They had wondered if the fox had been found dead and its collar had been brought aboard a ship. But “there are no boats so far up”, she said.

The fox is believed to be on Ellesmere Island, though its precise­ whereabouts are unknown. The transmitter stopped working in February.

The Times