Swift foxes only weigh about 5 lbs – smaller than your average house cat – their diet consists largely of small mammals like mice, rabbits, and prairie dogs, as well as insects and plants in the summer months.
Swift fox are native to Montana, but suffered heavily due to habitat loss and poisoning efforts aimed at larger canids like wolves and coyotes and were believed to have been extirpated from all of Montana by 1969. They are currently classified in Montana as “vulnerable because of rarity or restricted range and/or other factors.” There remains a distribution gap between the population of swift foxes along the Montana-Canada border and that of the core population in Wyoming, South Dakota, and south to New Mexico and Texas. But, thanks to reintroduction efforts in Canada, Fort Peck, and the Blackfeet Reservation, there are now a small number of swift foxes in Montana.