SACRAMENTO, Calif. — There’s a lot you can tell about the health of animal populations in an area by looking at droppings, said director of the California State Universities Endangered Species Recovery Program Jaime Rudd.

Rudd said it’s critical to do so because of the state’s unique biodiversity, certainly in the San Joaquin Valley.

“Most of the animals in the San Joaquin Valley are endangered, they're also endemic," Rudd said. "They're found nowhere else on this planet Earth except here in California's valley.”

The area home to the state’s only federally listed endangered species the San Joaquin Kit Fox.

Rudd and her team said the fox’s numbers closely follow the availability of their main prey, kangaroo rats.

“Really dependent on those populations and their fluctuations and rising, falling, which is often tied to climate,” she said.

The impact of climate on endangered species such as the San Joaquin Kit Fox and some of the ways we are fighting climate change, the subject of a newly released study co-authored by Uzma Ashraf, a post-doctoral scholar with the UC Davis Wild Energy Center.

The study looking at shifting habitats of wildlife due to climate change and loss of their new habitat through renewable energy sites.

“It is like dual challenge for the biodiversity," Ashraf said. "One is due to climate change. Another is like we are establishing renewable energy in their habitat.”

A big part of the state’s climate goals is utilizing renewable energy such as wind and solar to become carbon neutral by 2045.

But these types of power take up large amounts of land.

In the study, Ashraf said they used computer modeling, overlaying the shifting range of kits foxes with existing and future renewable energy sites. She said they found they would lose an additional 3.8% of habitat on top of the projected decrease due to climate change. 

“We say that we should, increase the renewable energy, but at the same time, we should do the proactive measures to," Ashraf said. "To make passages for the wildlife, or we can do the restoration plans, we can do avoidance.”

An example Ashraf said of needing to better plan a renewable energy site.

A planned solar farm in the Mojave Desert Ashraf said that has the potential to take away key critical habitat of Western Joshua Trees.

Rudd said while San Joaquin Kit Foxes have lost significant amounts of their habitat, she said they have adapted to new environments to an extent.

“Interestingly enough in the city of Bakersfield we have a really large urban population of kit foxes,” Rudd said.

And while that adaptation is positive.

Both Rudd and Ashraf agree, they hope their conservation work will be utilized by those planning important renewable energy sites to better incorporate critical habitat.