Twenty Bright Hopes

 

In July 2017, a female arctic fox was trapped, fitted with a tracking collar, and released. Researchers at the Norwegian Polar Institute hoped her wanderings would give insight into the life of this small, sturdy creature. At first, her movements were less than remarkable. The following March, she left the Svalbard archipelago and journeyed far out onto the polar sea ice. Twenty-one days later, she arrived in Greenland. By July, she’d made her way to Ellesmere Island in Canada. The fox traveled an average of nearly 30 miles per day, over sea ice and glaciers. The scientists tracking her believe she survived primarily on “marine food resources,” including water fowl. In Canada, she may have switched to a diet of lemmings. The tracking collar stopped transmitting about four years ago, so there’s no telling where she ended up. But, as arctic foxes don’t tend to live more than four years in the wild, it may be a moot point.