KINGSTON, R.I. – July 2, 2026 – For more than 20 years, no one had confirmed seeing the tiny gray fox that once roamed the forests of Cozumel, a Mexican island known for its turquoise waters and coral reefs. Many assumed the animal had disappeared forever.

Then, in 2023, a University of Rhode Island doctoral student planning a diving trip to the island stumbled upon the mystery of the missing fox and decided he had to find out whether the critically endangered fox was still in existence.

“There has only ever been a single study on this animal, based solely on subfossil remains,” said Travis Bayer, a Ph.D. student in URI’s Department of Natural Resources Science and founder of the nonprofit conservation organization Pathos Wildlife. “This was the only physical evidence that the fox had ever occurred on the island. No one had ever conducted a targeted survey to determine whether the foxes were still present. I needed to know if they still existed.”

“I naively thought I had a chance of seeing it during my trip,” he added. “Obviously, I did not.”

But his search had begun.

The fox reappears

The animal Bayer was searching for is no ordinary fox. Significantly smaller than its mainland relatives due to island dwarfism, it may have been evolving in isolation for thousands of years, possibly predating human settlement. It is an undescribed species found only on Cozumel, an island off Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula with one of the highest concentrations of endemic wildlife in Mexico. More than 30 species and subspecies on the island are found nowhere else on Earth, including three unique carnivores.

Bayer spent the following months developing a survey method and filing for research permits. But the fox found him first—six months later, before he set foot on the island again.

After residents reported a disoriented animal near a coastal highway, Rafael Chacón, director of conservation and environmental education at the Fundación de Parques y Museos de Cozumel, and his team located an adult male fox. It was the first confirmed sighting in more than 20 years. Following a veterinary assessment, the healthy animal was released into the Laguna Colombia State Reserve.

“It was a very surreal moment,” Bayer said. “Most of all, it confirmed that these foxes still persist and that this survey was more important than ever.”

Chacón documented the encounter and uploaded photographs to the citizen science platform iNaturalist—the first photographic evidence of the Cozumel fox in recorded history. The discovery led to a collaboration between Pathos Wildlife and the foundation, with Sarah Kienle and URI’s CEAL Lab later joining the effort to help develop aerial survey methods.

Their findings were recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Neotropical Biology and Conservation, lending scientific weight to what had once been little more than local legend.

A race against time

Today, Bayer and his collaborators are conducting one of the largest camera-trap surveys ever carried out on the island, deploying 84 cameras across nearly 100 square kilometers of habitat. It’s the first targeted survey specifically designed to determine whether Cozumel foxes still survive in the wild.

The team is also using thermal drones through URI’s CEAL Lab to develop new methods for locating rare and elusive species. So far, sightings have been limited to areas near the community of El Cedral, suggesting the fox’s range may be alarmingly small.

The threats are mounting. Road expansion has fragmented the forest and introduced predators and competitors—including feral dogs, ocelots, and boa constrictors—now threaten wildlife that evolved without these pressures.

Researchers hope to determine how many foxes remain, identify the habitats most critical to their survival, understand the threats they face, and gather the data needed to formally describe the animal as a new and distinct species.

“If these foxes are still holding on,” Bayer said, “we need to understand how to protect them before it’s too late.”

This story was written by Anna Gray in the College of the Environment and Life Sciences.