We just got great photos of arctic foxes from Johann Oli Hilmarsson, who is well known for his bird photos. One of the pictures is of a „naked fox" or an arctic fox with hypotrichosis disease, which makes the foxes loose a majority of its fur. This disease is only known in Icelandic foxes, it is not genetic but the pups get infected by their mother. Fox pups with the disease have higher mortality rate than other fox pups but it is not known to affect mortality of adult foxes. Naked foxes have higher energy demands than other foxes and thus spend more time finding food. The females with the disease have no problem finding mates and they are even more fertile than other female foxes. The males, however, rarely manage to keep a territory or a mate, possibly because they use all their energy in feeding to prevent heat loss.

Reference:
Pall Hersteinsson, Gudmundur Georgsson, Stefán Adalsteinsson & Eggert Gunnarsson (2007). The naked fox: hypotrichosis in arctic foxes (Alopex lagopus). Polar Biol (2007) 30:1047-1058

the year 2010 has been nominated as a Year of Biodiversity by the United Nations. The Icelandic Ministry of Environment has chosen April 25th as the day of the Envirionment but the first Icelandic Nature Scientist, Sveinn Pálsson, was born on this day the year 1762.
Unfortunately, The Arctic Fox Centre has no program to celebrate the day of the Environment but we recommend people in Westfjords to visit Ósvör with Nature History Institute in Bolungarvik. They will show you the "live in the shore" from 11.-12 and Ósvör museum will be open too.

In Reykjavík, Askja, the Nature Science building at The University of Iceland will be open from 10.30 - 15.00 on Saturday April 24th. and there are lots of interesting things for the whole family.

We wish you a great summer 2010 and don´t be afraid to visit the Westfjords of Iceland and the totally unique nature and wildlife

 

These days The Arctic Fox Centre is visiting the elementary school of Sudavik and educating on Icelandic mammals with special regards to wood mice and arctic foxes. This project is the centre´s contribution to the society and a part of our policy. The elementary school is a whole stage school with students from 1st to 10th grade, grouped into 3 stages. All age classes have been visited once and the kids were amazing. We will continue and visit all classes again during this week. We have got a lot of new ideas and comments which we can bear in mind while designing the Arctic Fox Centre´s Exhibition.

The Westfjord association of tourism helds a conference on Environmental Certification for Westfjords, Saturday, April 17th. The conference is held in connection to the head meeting of the association. The conference is held at Hotel Nupur in Dyrafjordur and begins at 11.00. It is open for everyone but all material is in Icelandic, amongst speakers is the Icelandic Minster of Environment, Svandís Svavarsdóttir.
Of course The Arctic Fox Centre takes active part at the conference and we look forward to listen to interesting talks and share interest with other people. We encourage everyone to show up.
The schedule of the conference is found at the association´s web page: www.vestfirskferdamal.is

Yesterday, our helpers arrived again to work at the house in Eyrardalur.
It was Alan, Astrid and Óli, all from The University Center (www.hsvest.is) who were willing to help around with cleaning old
boards which will be used in making a new wall upstairs, for the office and WC.
As before, the group didn´t hesitate but started working already. We managed to get some photos
but they hardly looked up from their jobs.
How lucky we are to have such helpers around, giving us some of their valuable time.

- Ahead are more projects, for example isolating the ceiling and when spring arrives, we will start with outdoor work.

Uri Golman, our photographer, came to Iceland few days ago to start on The Arctic Fox Project in Westfjords. Tobias Mennle, who was working a lot with us last summer, filming arctic foxes and other Icelandic nature phenomenon, also arrived to continue with his filming project. The plan was that Uri and Tobias would head to Hornstrandir Nature Reserve, with the wildlife-biologist Frank Drygala, to collect material about the life of the foxes during spring, e.g. pairing, mating and establishing territories.
This time they didn´t get to Westfjords since, as most people know, a volcanic eruption started in Eyjafjallajokull area, south of Þórsmörk. Uri and Tobias have been there for the last days and Uri sent us these magnificent photos. Uri just arrived from his last project in India, photographing tigers, you can see all about Uri´s projects on his web page: www.urigolman.com

French tourists who hiked in Hornstrandir Nature Reserve last summer, have published two great videos of the tour on youtube.
On these videos, you see the magnificent landscape of the area and sense the strength of the weather and nature.
The wildlife you see is the characteristic fauna of the Nature Reserve: in the huge birdcliffs you see kittiwakes (also those bathing in the lake), guillemoths, brünnich guillemot, even puffins (rare in fox area), razorbills and fulmars. The arctic fox´s female with the pups is of the blue colour morph and look how tame they are - this is because The Hornstrandir Nature Reserve is a sanctuary for the arctic foxes, they are protected there as well as the other wildlife in the region.
Hornstrandir Nature Reserve is the arctic fox paradise in Iceland and for all who wish to enjoy wildlife and magnificent landscape, we recommend a hiking tour out there.

We hope it´s ok for us to set the link to the videos on our web page, it looks as the owner is Julian Vallette and we just wish to thank him. The music played with the video is from the Icelandic band Sigurros and fits quite well.

you can see the former video here
and the latter on (with the foxes) here

The Arctic Fox Centre will open at 12 o´clock on June the 12th next summer. The Arctic Fox Café will also open and it will be nice for everyone to sit at the Café, indoors or outdoors, and make further plans of the tour, or just enjoy the beautiful landscape of Álftafjörður.

At the Café we will have some room for little exhibitons and the first will be of a stamp and postcard collection from Helgi Gunnarson, who has collected stamps, postcards and envelopes from all over the world, decorated by various arctic foxes. It is an honour for us at the centre to be able to show the collection to our guests and we look forward to have it.

We at The Arctic Fox Centre are now setting all our strength into designing and preparing the exhibition. We hope it will become as great for you all as we dream of making it the very best. We have got a lot of nice comments and ideas besides our own, this is all developing now.

For example would we like to hire a good "reader" to educate on the biology and adaption of the arctic fox and tell the story of the foxhunters. Then we could allow the guests to "listen" while walking through the exhibition. To make this possible, we need some equipment, e.g. ipods or mp3 players and headphones....
More

We visited the future house of The Arctic Centre today and met the busy carpenders, Ragnar and Einar who, with the help of their collagues Arnar and Magnus, the chair carpender, have been rebuilding the house. They were covering the walls of the first floor with the old panel boards. The house looks great and it is so exciting to plan the interiors of the Arctic Fox Café and the exhibition.
Last week we had the exhibition designers, Finnur Arnar and Auður Alfífa, who syncronized the ideas of the various fields of the exhibition and discussed the general look of the project.