State Says It May Move Foxes to L.A. Zoo : Wildlife: The family of 9 living along the Costa Mesa Freeway will have a new home--but only if the animals can be captured safely. Trappers will assess the situation, and a decision is expected today.

COSTA MESA —  Pressured by the governor and hundreds of animal lovers, state wildlife officials said Wednesday that they plan to move a family of foxes living alongside a new stretch of freeway to the Los Angeles Zoo--but only if the animals can be captured safely.

The family--apparently two adult foxes, a yearling and six pups--was found last week in a den on an embankment of a new extension of the Costa Mesa Freeway, which is expected to open to traffic next week.

The governor’s office and the director of the California Department of Fish and Game decided that capturing the red foxes is the preferred alternative. But state-hired trappers must first investigate whether that can be done without harming the creatures. A decision is expected today.

“Our trappers will go out tonight (Wednesday night) and look at the situation and make an assessment as to the risk of going in and capturing them,” said Rolph Mall, deputy regional director at the state agency’s Southern California office. “We don’t want to have them damaged after all this. That would really be terrible. We want people to understand there is risk to this.”

State wildlife officials had planned to leave the foxes at the embankment, saying they had safely lived alongside freeways for several years and they should decide for themselves where to move when traffic appears.

But then state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) pressured the agency to move them, and Gov. Pete Wilson told the director of the agency in Sacramento to consider the options.

Phones at the Fish and Game agency’s Long Beach office have been ringing almost constantly over the past two days, with most of the estimated 700 callers demanding that the foxes be captured and relocated out of the way of the freeway. Some Southern Californians even flew to Sacramento to personally lobby the governor and his staff.

“We were hoping they could just be left alone,” Mall said. “But this is the people talking. People don’t want to see that happen.”

If the foxes cannot be enticed out, the trappers may have to dig them out, and that could endanger them with falling earth and debris. One trapper who will assess the risk is a Humboldt State University graduate student who has been tracking this family of foxes, and another is from the federal Department of Agriculture.

“Right now the word we’re getting is the safety of trapping is probably very good, that there is a low mortality possibility,” said Larry Sitton, wildlife management supervisor of the Southern California office of Fish and Game. “But we don’t want to make that judgment yet until our trappers go out and investigate.”

Sitton said the agency’s biologists still don’t want to see the foxes in captivity, “but if it’s the preferred option, then we are certainly capable of meeting the wishes of the governor’s office.”

State wildlife officials said there is no safe place to release red foxes in California.

Adored by the public yet called the “the Saddam Hussein of wildlife” by biologists, red foxes are not native to California, so they upset the balance of nature and terrorize the area’s rare birds and other animals.

“The red fox has pillaged wildlife habitat throughout California,” Sitton said. “He has eliminated the clapper rail and the least tern (two endangered bird species) from many places of California.”

Red foxes pose one of the worst wildlife problems facing the state, he said.

“Much to their credit, the Los Angeles Zoo has agreed to accept these animals,” Sitton said. “The L.A. Zoo doesn’t really need them, but they understand the problem these animals represent to the environment, so they want to help us out.”

Michael Dee, curator of mammals at the Los Angeles Zoo, said he called Fish and Game and offered to take the foxes because he received so many “frantic” phone calls from animal lovers.

“We’ve offered the little guys a new home,” he said.

Dee added that the zoo, which already has two aging foxes, will take the new family permanently if they get along and there is enough space.

If they are captured, the foxes will be neutered and held in a zoo quarantine cage for 30 days, then released in a dirt display area of the zoo that is about 40 feet by 25 feet, Dee said. Eventually, that area might be expanded, since one donor already has offered money for the work.

Dee said he has “misgivings” about taking the animals from the wild, especially since foxes deal well with traffic and rarely get hit. But there was little choice “under the circumstances, with people going all the way to the governor and the emotional aspects of it. . . . Fish and Game has taken a lot of heat,” he said.

“I think we can give them a quality home and a quality life,” Dee said. “For these particular animals, it was either the potential of being run over or getting canine distemper. This way, they’ll live out a full life with daily veterinarian care and adequate food and water and people who will appreciate them.”

Moving the freeway foxes to wilderness in another state would contaminate the gene pool of foxes there, because they were born and raised in an urban environment, wildlife biologists said. Most states do not accept them, Sitton said.

The species was brought to California from eastern states decades ago, imported by furriers, hunters and people seeking them as pets. Since then, they have spread throughout the state, killing or displacing many of California’s native species, from rare least terns at Bolsa Chica and Seal Beach wetlands to tiny endangered kit foxes in Kern County.

“People see this as a cute animal,” Mall said. “But maybe what we should do is hold up a little least tern and a fox, and say this little cute guy eats this little cute guy; which little one do you want?”

Sitton said he had trouble understanding the public’s fears since foxes throughout Southern California live along freeways. Members of this particular family, he said, have lived near the Costa Mesa Freeway for more than a year and other county freeways for about three years.

“I hope we don’t have to get in the position to move every animal that gets in the path of a freeway,” Mall said. “What about a ground squirrel nesting there? They are at risk too. And deer. There’s a risk for all these animals.”