Darwin's fox is a small fox of southern Chilean forests. Its dark coat and reddish backs of the ears are distinctive; separate populations occur on Chiloé Island and the mainland.
Its coat is dark, the backs of its ears are reddish and its jaw has a white patch.
In the Nahuelbuta Mountains of southern Chile, camera traps recorded carnivores in a landscape shared by native forest, plantations and other human land uses. For Darwin’s fox, models found a stronger positive association with native forest cover within 250–500 m at night. The surrounding patch therefore mattered alongside the immediate camera location.
Native forest at the camera station also showed a positive relationship with fox occurrence in some time-specific models. Combining day and night could hide these differences. The study describes one mainland landscape and modelled occurrence, not proof of population growth or a pattern that applies equally to every part of the fox’s range.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
In Nahuelbuta, Darwin’s fox occurrence was related to native forest differently by time of day and spatial scale. Forest cover within 250–500 m had a stronger positive association at night, while cover at camera stations also mattered in time-specific models. Monitoring can record both the immediate site and surrounding forest patches, separately by day and night. These local occurrence models do not measure population trend or the entire range.