Sagchudak Island is a small island in the Andreanof Islands

Andreanof Islands

The Andreanof Islands are a group of islands in the Aleutian Islands in southwest Alaska. They are located between Amchitka Pass and the Rat Islands group to the west, and Amukta Pass and the Islands of Four Mountains group to the east, at about 52° North and 172°57' to 179°09' West. The islands...

 group in the Aleutian Islands of southwestern Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

. The roughly rectangular island is approximately 1.4 miles (2.3 km) long and 0.6 mi (1 km) wide and lies about 0.93 mi (1.5 km) off the southern coast of Atka Island

Atka Island

Atka Island is the largest island in the Andreanof Islands of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. The island is east of Adak Island. It is long and wide with a land area of , making it the 22nd largest island in the United States. The northeast of Atka Island contains the Korovin volcano which...

. The island's current name is nearly identical to the native Aleut

Aleut language

Aleut is a language of the Eskimo–Aleut language family. It is the heritage language of the Aleut people living in the Aleutian Islands, Pribilof Islands, and Commander Islands. As of 2007 there were about 150 speakers of Aleut .- Dialects :Aleut is alone with the Eskimo languages in the...

 name for the island and it entered navigational charts by the early 1850s. In the 1900s and 1910s, the island was one of many Aleutian islands stocked with fox

Fox

Fox is a common name for many species of omnivorous mammals belonging to the Canidae family. Foxes are small to medium-sized canids , characterized by possessing a long narrow snout, and a bushy tail .Members of about 37 species are referred to as foxes, of which only 12 species actually belong to...

es by the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 government for hunting

Hunting

Hunting is the practice of pursuing any living thing, usually wildlife, for food, recreation, or trade. In present-day use, the term refers to lawful hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species contrary to applicable law...

 and fur trading purposes. Although the foxes on uninhabited Sagchudak were not directly hunted, some were occasionally trapped and moved to and from the island to help ensure genetic stability

Genetic drift

Genetic drift or allelic drift is the change in the frequency of a gene variant in a population due to random sampling.The alleles in the offspring are a sample of those in the parents, and chance has a role in determining whether a given individual survives and reproduces...

in the various separated colonies.