Did 63,000 Foxes "Vanished" In 2018?

 I found this to be very interesting and it was posted by Maria Mia on a Face Book fox group:

"Foxes have been documented in Britain's southern urban areas since the 1930s. The expansion of these areas during the interwar period created an ideal new habitat with an abundance of food.

The number of foxes living across the UK isn't officially recorded, however a 2013 report by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) estimates that there are around 430,000 - roughly one fox for every 150 people in the UK.

The number in urban areas is thought to have increased from 33,000 in 1995 to 150,000 in 2017. However, in 2018 there was a 42% decline in red foxes in Britain, although the cause is unknown.

Fox populations are self-regulating, with attempted culls proving unsuccessful. In the 1970s, London boroughs were responsible for their resident foxes. In Bromley, a fox-control officer killed 300 foxes a year, but made no dent in the population. Urban fox control was abandoned in the 1980s."

Bristol I believe was the first to abandon fox 'control' because it realised how expensive and pointless it was. The above information comes from the natural History Museum website post The secret life of urban foxes By Emily Osterloff

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the-secret-life-of-urban-foxes.html?fbclid=IwAR3U0ET-xi8oRgR1Dq_eBDNKLqhqkCI5AA9ojL9Ew3uTWapzNZyN0BLgTyQ

The post links back to a British Trust for Ornithology survey report https://www.bto.org/our-science/projects/bbs/latest-results/mammal-monitoring

Let's look at what was written in the NHM post. Firstly, it mentions Britain's southern urban areas and mentions the 1930s. Research by the British Fox Study (est 1976) hasshown that foxes were sighted in urban and suburban areas well before the 1930s. If we look at Scotland then we know foxes were sighted in cities in the 19th century.

Human activity is followed by waste and waste attracts vermin and vermin are part of the Prey-Predator cycle. You attract the lovely little birds to your garden then the big predatory birds -kestrels and sparrowhawks will notice them. Waste attracting rats will attract THEIR predators -cats and more commonly foxes. Foxes have been found living underthe actual farmyard as well as in barn walls preferring rabbits to the poultry not a few yards from their den.

There being foxes in urban areas and people knowing this are two different things. In the days of no or poor street lights something the size of a cat going over a wall, rushing past or seen turning a corner into anotherroad would be a 'cat'. The first thought would not have been "a fox!" for the simple reason that "you don't get foxes in towns -no chickens" (I know but it was a way of thinking back then). . Dustbins knocked over during the night was put down to a "bloody cat" but would more likely have been a fox or walk-about neighbourhood dog.

If villages were a good source of food a town or city was much better and foxes are great at hiding out and twons and cities offer far more places for foxes to hide safely than hunting areas. I have heard of people not noticing their cats getting any fatter or less hungry yet rat and mice numbers dropped. In one case a local fox was reported as "looking very fit and healthy but no one round here feeds him"...he fed himself no doubt on rats and mice.

Foxes were certainly in southern urban areas before the 1930s but who was studying them -they were"just foxes" and, 'obviously', not in towns.

if the 150, 000 foxes is given and the fall of numbers was 42% that would mean the population was at around 87,000 so 63,000 foxes were gone. We do know (statistics were given in The Red Paper) that badger numbers killed by cars was annually around 55,000 and my estimate was that the number of foxes killed in RTAs was far higher as traffic in towns and cities increased and we saw foxes killed in pairs or even 3s by faster moving traffic. It is all guessology because there is no EXACT figure and no one reports hitting a badger or fox while driving around.

To the above we can add the numbers being killed illegally by snares (there should be no such thing as legal use) for their fur or 'fun' and even some foxes hunted and killed in urban areas.

There are also those who deliberately target foxes (as they do badgers) with poison bait because of a mentally unbalanced hatred of both animals. These people do not live in country areas so cannot claim 'vermin control' -as DEFRA points out foxes have never been officially classed as vermin- and the false claim that foxes kill pet cats is often repeated but since 1976 I have never come across a genuine case so it cannot be claimed foxes are targetted as "pet killers". To date all claimed fox attacks on humans and even children (in the presence of"rather aggressive" pet dogs -which might offer the true culprit) have proven false with those involved being found to support fox hunting after a brief background search -including at least two vets. We know these poisonings take place and in some cases the culprit has been caught by locals after police ineffectiveness and a stop put to the poisoning.

The methods used to poison foxes are well known and have been identified in press reports. Attempts to get the rescues or wildlife centres involved in these cases to cooperate to set up a register of poison cases has met with 100% lack of response. These fox rescues and charities are therefore part of the problem that allows the killings to continue.

We then have 'accidental' poisoning. People buying rat/mouse poison in supermarkets and shops and who sprinkle it on bait for rodents but this is eaten by hedgehogs, cats, foxes, badges and so on. We then have foxes who eat rats now becominbg tolerant to poisons used -the fox dies a slow death from "secondary poisoning" -which also kills a lot of other wildlife and birds of prey. Then slug pellets. In 2021 there is no need for such things because the internet and books are full of advice on slug deterance and when hedgehogs eat slugsthey ingest the poison and I've seen that first hand. Foxes will take snails and slugs and so also digest the poison.

RTA and the other factors would, in fact, make that 42% rather low? The other major reason why these stats cannot be taken seriously are fox feeders. Since 2019 I have monitored online fox groups as well as spoken to long term fox watchers and mange ios treated fairly quickly so there are no massive number of deaths from that. What I have noted is a brace of foxes having 4-7 young or even more (survival rates are low due to discussed factors) and some of these reach adulthood and have young of their own.

Fox feeders tend to be very secretive so would not go onto a survey and state they have a family group of foxes or how many. There are other 30,000 plus members on three particular groups and not all feed foxes but hundreds do -their stats would not be included in the BTO survey. I was once told by a neighbour at a place where I lived that there were no foxes locally but it turned out later that a lady told me she fed the foxes as did the person who told me that there were no foxes! So I asked the said neighbour why he had lied to me? "Well, there are two or three of us locally who look after them but there are a lot of nesty people out there who don't like foxes so we keep quiet".

I have no doubt that foxes are killed in their thousands every year and that deliberate killing should be prosecutable -which means the police actually giving resources for investigation. It strikes me as ludicrous that police forces are given many thousands to tackle countryside crime such as tractor or other vehicle theft and rustling 0taken from persons who themselves are taking part in illegal fox hunts, badger baiting and much more but are never properly investigated and rarely prosecuted.

We have no idea how many foxes there really are because it is impossible to do a head count. We can estimate the number of road deaths but it is all guessology -the number of domestic cats killing "millions" of wildlife species each year is a good example of how bad this guestimation can be because of a number of basic factors.

Yes, many thousands of foxes die each year and if anyhting that should see us looking at greater protection of the species which, because of habits and habitats like any wild species, regulates its own numbers.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/4054520337932989

https://onlinefoxforum.wixsite.com/foxes/about