Funding and the Need To Get It

 

I do not like talking money but there are times when you have to face the fact that personal pockets are not covering everything.

the British Fox Study (f. 1976) fought hard to get post mortems carried out on foxes that had died suddenly. Since 1976 all expenses came out of my pocket and that was about manageable but the new phase of work cannot really be covered "out of pocket".

Were we paying for the post mortems and tests thjen we would currently be looking at a few thousand pounds which, of course, would have meant no PMs were carried out.

The expense comes in the fact that we have one person who has to travel across the City of Bristol to check out any dead fox and ascertain that it does meet our criteria for PM. Petrol is not donated.

Then we have the problem of carcasse storage. Foxes are often found dead at the most awkward times -bank holidays, just before or over Christmas and so on. We cannot simply pick a dead fox up and drop it off. The first thing that happens is that I have to do the online paperwork then inform those involved that we have a fox. On a normal day we may have to wait a day and over bank holidays up to a week or more. By the time a fox was submitted it might be what we term "Well ripe and maggoty". No good for anything really.

We have asked naturalist groups and others in the City whether anyone has a chest freezer that they could store a fox in for a day or so and that request has received...no offers.

This means that we require a storage facility and we have asked whether anyone has a chest freezer to donate but the only response was an offer of one that did not work "but might if repaired" (ie: it was scrap).

That is one expense.

The other concerns DNA testing. I was hoping that some university able to afford to donate some free time to carrying out these tests might out there -the results could certainly result in a paper for someone at least. I have a container in my freezer (which my sister is not happy about) of hair samples. Back in the late 1990s Sir Alec Jeffries and Dr Esther Signer at Leicester University were carrying out DNA tests on UK "big cat" samples (a disaster as every idiot around submitted anything they could find) and that tyupe of thing might be useful for foxes.

We know that British foxes (not the EU imports) have a unique DNA. What we are looking for are any remnants of Old Fox in those found around the UK today -we know certain areas have EU fox DNA due to the past imports.

How are we going to get Old fox DNA samples? Well, the British Canid Historical Society has one of the finest Acquisition Managers (AM) you could ever hope for. Thanks entirely to the AM we have not just rare but some exceptional taxidermy specimens going back to at least the 1830s. There is no UK museum (I have checked with as many as I can find) with a collection of taxidermied fox (and NOT fox) masks and full bodies. It is unique and from these we hope that we might get samples for DNA -we (again) have checked and it is possible. But far more specimens are required so that the scientific research can be as thorough and accurate as possible and once and for all show that the Old Fox of the UK, isolated for millennia from Europe was unique -as should be original Irish foxes before importations.

That the AM has managed to negotiate and travel from one end of the country to the other by car to acquire these specimens is testimony to dedication. However, fuel and specimens cost money and there is only so much one person can buy.

The BCHS is not asking for funds so it can continue its jolly little hobby. In fact I hate even explaining why we need support. This funding is to get as clear a picture of Old Fox types and their uniqueness and to try to find out whether any of the Old Blood still exists. There has never been a project such as this before in the UK or Europe.

Taking the time to research and get professional opinions on fox health problems as well as treatments takes a great deal of time and we are lucky that we have Hayley de Ronde who specialises in this field.

If you take a look at the posts on this forum you will see -I hope it was obvious a long time ago- that the BCHS is not a "fluffy fox" group. It is a serious scientific one and has already made contact with mammalogists in other countries as part of its work.

If you are interested in foxes and finding out about them and their true history as well as what the Old foxes looked like or are a professional naturalist or zoologist then please consider donating towards the continued work.

THANK YOU