tracking device and then released by their researchers on the east coast of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard group of islands. The young fox crossed the polar ice from the islands to Greenland in 21 days, a distance of . She then moved on to Ellesmere Island in northern Canada, covering a total recorded distance of in 76 days, before her GPS tracker stopped working. She averaged just over a day, and managed as much as in a single day. Conservation status The Arctic fox has been assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List since 2004. However, the Scandinavian mainland population is acutely endangered, despite being legally protected from hunting and persecution for several decades. The estimate of the adult population in all of Norway, Sweden, and Finland is fewer than 200 individuals. Of these, especially in Finland, the Arctic fox is even classified as critically endangered, because even though the animal was pacified in Finland since 1940, the population has not recovered despite that. As a result, the populations of Arctic fox have been carefully studied and inventoried in places such as the Vindelfjällens Nature Reserve (Sweden), which has the Arctic fox as its symbol. The abundance of the Arctic fox tends to fluctuate in a cycle along with the population of lemmings and voles (a 3- to 4-year cycle). The populations are especially vulnerable during the years when the prey population crashes, and uncontrolled trapping has almost eradicated two subpopulations. The pelts of Arctic foxes with a slate-blue coloration were especially valuable. They were transported to various previously fox-free Aleutian Islands during the 1920s. The program was successful in terms of increasing the population of blue foxes, but their predation of Aleutian Canada geese conflicted with the goal of preserving that species. The Arctic fox is losing ground to the larger red fox. This has been attributed to climate change—the camouflage value of its lighter coat decreases with less snow cover. Red foxes dominate where their ranges begin to overlap by killing Arctic foxes and their kits. An alternative explanation of the red fox's gains involves the gray wolf. Historically, it has kept red fox numbers down, but as the wolf has been hunted to near extinction in much of its former range, the red fox population has grown larger, and it has taken over the niche of top predator. In areas of northern Europe, programs are