Oh. 'Scientific' Hunting

 So in this case to 'study' how a fox travels a GPS was fitted and the vixen was sent on its way. It revealed what anyone who knows anything about foxes would know; if not tied down by cubs foxes can travel great distances -it is even mentioned in the old fox hunting books.

This was more like pretending to do science and get to hunt a fox online until they were ready to shoot it. And Bournemouth University is so excited to be working with Game & Wildliofe 'Conservation' Trust and its predator control project. In REAL conservation you do not tage an animal and wait until you can shoot it. You tracjk and monitor and learn about it until it either dies naturally or a project ends.

I can see this as 21st century hunting to get last legalities. Catch, tag, release and hunt by GPS. Here is a give away:

We had no plans to tag foxes again this year, but our research on foxes in the Avon Valley is far from over. We still have an enormous amount of work to do, by way of mapping and making sense of the location data (circa. 170,000 GPS fixes) for 37 foxes, which requires the application of laborious and complex analytical skills.

So unless those foxes tagged are allowed to continue on with their lives and continue supplying data this is nothing morethan hunting pretending to be science (WHERE is the Change.Org petition to stop this?)

"Predator control"? What was the fox predating? Chickens -in this day and age the loss of any chickens to foxes is bad farming practice -I lived on a farm in Germany in the middle of fox country and not one chicken was lot to a fox. To rat attack and buzzads but not one fox. Sheep -too big. Lambs? During lambing season many farmers throw stillborn lambs over hedges or over walls "for the foxes to get rid of" (and that came from 20 different farmers -some of whom did the same thing with dead chickens).

A farmer fearing a fox in the21st century is someone with a fantasy prone nature or not that competent.

WHAT is to be controlled? Thousands of foxes die each year on the roads. Many hundreds die from mange and that's between being shot by gurning 'sportsmen' proudly showing off the cat sized dog they shot in numerous photographs.

Also, if -IF- foxes are such menaces WHY are hunts still making artificial coverts and populating them with foxes to hunt later. Fox hunting has never been about pest control until hunts found themselves sued for damages in the early 1900s when they declared their sport was active pest control.

This was far from an interesting experiment. To "preserve game birds" -until they can be shot en masse by people with little IQ and big wallets ?

The G&WCT should be condemned for this and not lauded. And any university cooperating as there "might be a paper in this" needs to also be condemned.

WILDLIFE experts were left foxed after a voyaging vixen covered 25km of the New Forest during one night, and also took a hair-raising stroll along a busy motorway.

The female fox’s adventures were monitored through GPS tracking by the Fordingbridge-based Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT).

She was fitted with the collar by the conservation charity’s predator ecologist, Mike Short, at a site near the town in April last year as part of its LIFE Waders for Real project’s research into fox behaviour.

As foxes are usually territorial, this one, which was still wearing her thick winter coat, was chosen as she was believed to be one of a family occupying the river meadows where she was found.

But this assumption was soon dispelled when the tracker showed that overnight the vixen had left the river meadows and headed east.

Moving along the course of a stream and navigating forestry tracks, she travelled about 25km across the district before settling near Totton and venturing into the town centre a few days later.

On another occasion she was tracked doing some risky foraging along the hard shoulder of the M27.

Further adventures followed about a week later when the fox headed south-west, leaving Ower, near Totton, around 10pm and travelling about 20km back across the New Forest to the Avon Valley. She followed the A31 for part of this journey.

By 5am she arrived at the edge of a country estate just south of Ringwood – an important breeding ground for threatened species of wading birds including lapwing and redshank.

The estate culls predators during the nesting season to protect the birds, but the fox managed to avoid being spotted by 20 cameras used by the GWCT’s monitoring team for over a week.

However, her luck ran out when she was finally caught by a camera set up by the game keeper and culled 10 days after returning to the Avon Valley.

The adventurous vixen’s legacy has been to provide the GWCT scientists a unique insight to help wildlife managers better understand fox behaviour, range and patterns of movement on wading bird breeding grounds.

This will help protect the nests and chicks of threatened species like the lapwing and redshank.

Mr Short said: “Our GPS-tracking of foxes in the Avon Valley has shown that while most foxes living around river meadows are highly territorial, some are surprisingly mobile.

“We don’t know where our vixen came from, but she showed how easily a fox can travel 20km in one night. This could indicate that some of the foxes that threaten the Avon Valley’s wading bird may migrate from Southampton or Bournemouth and Poole.”

The predator ecologist’s blog detailing the vixen’s travels can be found at https://bit.ly/2SDEUK8