Photographer Finds 50 Rare Cascade Foxes on Mount Rainier

When Gretchen Kay Stuart spotted a pale, bushy fox on a Mount Rainier snowbank in 2020, she had no idea she'd just met one of the rarest animals in North America.

Only about 50 Cascade red foxes exist in the wild, all living on Washington's Mount Rainier and Mount Adams. Even wildlife biologist Jocelyn Akins, who'd been protecting them since 1999, rarely saw them outside camera trap photos.

Stuart took that as a challenge. "She just laughed at me, like, 'Ha ha! Good luck,'" Stuart recalls. "She didn't think I would find them. But I found another individual that summer, and the following year, I found another two. I became obsessed."

The Cascade red fox isn't actually always red. They're a subspecies of lowland red foxes that adapted to cold mountain conditions during an ice age 11,000 years ago. As the climate warmed, they retreated to higher elevations and became trapped there.

"They're just stuck in these high elevations without the ability to increase genetic diversity," Stuart explains. "They have a lot of threats that they face."

The biggest dangers come from human activity. In June 2025, Stuart found a den at a ski resort where the father fox was hit by a car. Other family members died after eating rodenticide used to control deer mice at the resort.

A month later, park rangers called Stuart about another den with three kits. She recognized the mother immediately. It was Shadow, a fox she'd first photographed and named when the animal was just 5 months old in 2022.

Stuart's unique ability to identify individual foxes by subtle features impressed Akins. "I always thought of foxes as not being identifiable as individuals," the biologist said. "But Gretchen was looking at subtler things."

The Ripple Effect

Stuart's photography partnership with the Cascades Carnivore Project launched a public awareness campaign that helped persuade Washington State to list the Cascade red fox as endangered in 2022. The state government now works with ski resorts to minimize hazards like road traffic and rodenticides.

Traditional stories from local Native cultures about clever mountain foxes provide clues about where these animals lived before European arrival. Modern camera traps and Stuart's patient observation are filling in the rest of the picture.

Shadow's three kits are learning to hunt in subalpine meadows filled with huckleberries, pocket gophers, and snowshoe hares. Their survival depends on protecting the habitat and reducing human threats.

One photographer's obsession is giving these ghostly mountain foxes their best chance at a future.