We Killed Wildcats. Let's Import More!

 "We made them extinct -let's import new ones!"

When it comes to fox hunting and vulpicide as a national past time at one point it is no wonder the British Old type foxes went extinct. And so the hunts imported thousands every year to replace the Old. That,  Deer were hunted to the point where they became extinct or so rare that...hunts had to import more from Europe. Now, hares were hunted to the same point of extinction that...more were brought in from Europe.

This old article is worth noting because it shows the same approach with Scottish wildcats. Well, the fact is this: if you have to import European wildcats to keep the Scottish ones from going extinct then you no longer have a native species but an introduced species.

Since at least the 17th century it has been noted that the wildvcats of then England, Wales (which hung on until at least the 1930s) and Scotland were only surviving due to feral domestic cats. The actual real Scottish wildcat probably does not exist even in DNA because the wildcat they are trying to "preserve" today is not the original wildcat.

By killing through shooting, snaring and, oh yes we know what goes on, poisoning feral domestic cats they are preventing natural selection and evolution. I do not believe we have any "true bloods" or "pure" Scottish wildcats and the only reason that those involved do not understand why is because they are taught and accept dogma and do not study the classical natural history books and they will probably tell you that they know better than "the old fellas who never had science" behind them. True but those naturalists (and damn them for it) were all 'sportsmen' who went out killing things and noted how they were disappearing but continued anyway. 

The only way of maintaining atrue wildcat species is the step back and let natural selection do what it has been doing for hundreds of years; determine what breeds with what and establishes itself as the wildcat. NOT what some humans at a university or sat behind a cushy desk decide is allowed and not allowed.

As with so many species humans drove them to the edge of and then over the brink into extinction.  Now humans want to start saving species so that they can be killed off again and there are too many examples and private estates and gamekeepers will continue to kill the wildcat until someone gets off of their fat ass and decides to actually enforce protection and prosecute with no "Is it? Can't be sures" but "It looks like a wildcat therefore it is a wildcat" and prosecute and prosecute until people understand.

Scotland considers continental wildcats to save native species from extinction

This article is more than 3 years old

Releasing ‘pure’ animals could counter interbreeding with domestic cats, experts say

Interbreeding means Scottish wildcats are close to becoming functionally extinct. Photograph: Barrie Harwood / Alamy/Alamy

Severin Carrell and Libby Brooks

Mon 24 Dec 2018 07.00 GMT

Conservationists could release wildcats captured from other European countries in the Scottish Highlands in a final effort to protect Scotland’s population from extinction.

Recent genetic testing by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland of 276 Scottish wildcat samples found those in the wild are so heavily interbred with domestic cats that they are close to becoming functionally extinct.

Leading ecologists have said the trend could be reversed by capturing pure-bred wildcats on the continent and releasing them in isolated and unspoilt parts of the Highlands, hoping they can replenish the Scottish population with pure wildcat DNA.

The proposal was discussed in September at a meeting of conservation agencies and wildlife experts involved in Scottish Wildcat Action, the government-funded umbrella organisation charged with protecting the species.

Sir John Lister-Kaye, a naturalist involved in the SWA, said the core proposal being developed was to set up a new captive breeding and release programme using wild caught animals and captive Scottish wildcats, which are generally purer genetically.

SWA is drafting proposals to house them in a new wildcat breeding centre in the Highlands, probably based at the Highland wildlife park near Aviemore, a safari park which includes a captive wildcat enclosure owned by the RZSS.

Scottish wildcats were split off from the continental population about 9,000 years ago,after the last ice age. Photograph: Peter Cairns/Northshots

The park is already home to the UK’s only breeding polar bear, a Siberian tiger enclosure and a Eurasian wolf enclosure. There are 94 captive wildcats held in various zoos and private collections around the UK.

“Everyone agreed that captive breeding was the way forward,” Lister-Kaye said. “If there are insufficient high quality wildcats the SWA would introduce pure wildcats from other parts of Europe, and that is now seen to be the way forward to save the species.”

The scheme would require approval, funding and licensing by Scottish Natural Heritage, the government agency charged with protecting native wildlife, and Scottish ministers.

A similar translocation strategy was used in 2009 in a government-funded project by the RZSS and Scottish Wildlife Trust to release beavers in Argyll in south-west Scotland, using animals trapped in Norway. Eventually captive animals from elsewhere in Scotland were added, because some of the Norwegian beavers were unable to adapt or died in quarantine.

The RZSS genetic study, which was published last week in the Journal of Evolutionary Applications, tested samples from 276 live wild and captive wildcats, and samples from dead specimens including roadkill, and compared them with 19 domestic cat samples.

Beaver born in the wild in UK for first time in 400 years

Read more

Dr Helen Senn, who led the study, said the bulk of the wildcats shared the same gene pool as their domestic counterparts: “Having tested almost 300 wild-living and captive wildcats, we now have genetic data which confirms our belief that the vast majority of Scottish wildcats living in the wild are hybrids to one extent or another.”

Lister-Kaye said the RZSS research confirmed a long-standing belief that domestic cat genes were dominant in non-captive Scottish wildcats across the country, a trend being reinforced by continued interbreeding. The point was now being reached where wildcats, which are naturally shy and elusive, would disappear from the Highlands.

Wildcats are found in areas of France, Spain, the Balkans, the Caucasian steppes, the Indian subcontinent and Africa, but they are so rare the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has placed them on the red list of endangered species.

The Scottish population, which was split off from the continental population about 9,000 years ago, after the last ice age, is in crisis. The IUCN says its status is bad and declining. Dr Roo Campbell, SWA’s priority areas manager, said only 100 to 300 survive in the wild in Scotland and were reduced to living in shrinking pockets of the Highlands.

Campbell said the SWA was waiting for the results of a special review by the IUCN of Scotland’s situation before finally deciding on a rescue strategy. “The very high levels of hybridisation reported in [Senn’s] paper is a very specific and challenging situation we are facing in Scotland,” he said.

Lister-Kaye said the wildcats’ natural habitats had shrunk dramatically because farming and commercial forestry plantations had severely reduced their range, cutting off their food supplies. That drives them closer to farms and villages, where they are more likely to crossbreed with domestic and feral cats.

“I’m optimistic,” he said. “I don’t actually think it’s terribly complicated. It takes money and time. Where I think we’ve got a real problem is in reinstating habitat. Where it exists it is very, very patchy.”

Humans Are Globally Wiping Out Species Yet 'Animal Lovers' in the UK Let Their Species Go Unprotected

 

To begin with here is a quote from The Smithsonian Magazine by Nora McGreevy titled "Humans Wiped Out Two-Thirds of the World’s Wildlife in 50 Years" (16th Sept. 2020)

 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-wiped-out-two-thirds-worlds-wildlife-50-years-180975824/

"Two major reports released this month paint a grim portrait of the future for our planet’s wildlife. First, the Living Planet Report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), published last week, found that in half a century, human activity has decimated global wildlife populations by an average of 68 percent.

"The study analyzed population sizes of 4,392 monitored species of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and amphibians from 1970 to 2016, reports Karin Brulliard for the Washington Post. It found that populations in Latin America and the Caribbean fared the worst, with a staggering 94 percent decline in population. All told, the drastic species decline tracked in this study “signal a fundamentally broken relationship between humans and the natural world,” the WWF notes in a release.

"The WWF report singles out habitat destruction caused by humans as the main threat to the world’s biodiversity. For example, freshwater mammal, bird, amphibian and reptile populations have declined by an average of four percent each year since 1970.

“You begin to see a picture of an unraveling of nature. That is alarming—and I think alarming, even by our own measures of alarming,” WWF chief scientist Rebecca Shaw tells CNN’s Amy Woodyatt. “… [W]e’re seeing very distinct declines in freshwater ecosystems, largely because of the way we dam rivers and also because of the use of freshwater resources for producing food to feed a growing population of people worldwide.”

"Then, on Tuesday, the United Nations published its Global Biodiversity Outlook report, assessing the progress—or lack thereof—of the 196 countries who signed onto the Aichi Biodiversity Targets in 2010. This ten year plan outlined ambitious goals to staunch the collapse of biodiversity across the globe. Yet according to the U.N.’s report, the world has collectively failed to reach a single one of those goals in the last decade, reports Catrin Einhorn for the New York Times.

"The U.N. report did contain bright spots. For instance, experts pointed to the efficacy of human-led conservation efforts, such as a program in Pakistan that protects snow leopards and a campaign to save the Japanese crested ibis from extinction, reports Matthew Green for Reuters. Without conservation efforts, the study estimates that the numbers of bird and mammal extinctions would have been twice as high during the last decade."

You may now be wondering what this has to do with foxes and wildcats in the UK? Well, I know it comes as a shock to a lot of people raised on the myth that Britain, and particularly the English, is "a nation of animal lovers".

Hunter-gatherers initially hunted for food and one animal could provide a lot to a small family group. But then, at an undefined point in history, humans decided that it was fun to hunt and kill for ‘fun’. Purely and simply no longer living alongside nature but abusing it. It is claimed that woodland and forests were cut down for agriculture and it certainly was but not on the scale that was required. It is recorded in official sources and works from the 10^th century on that forestry was cut down or burnt down simply to chase wolves out to kill.

When I read this initially I assumed it was simply exaggeration or some political comment from the time.  However, the more I read the more I realised that what I had been taught was (apologies) pure bull-shit. Dogma taught from once generation to the next and without exception the story was that packs of wolves were attacking and wiping out livestock and killing those wolves was a matter of survival. The historical accounts note that this lupicide was carried out even if there were no “wolf problems” and in certain areas it was forbidden to kill wolves as the local lord wanted some “for sport”.  There was money in wolf-skins and remains were simply dumped into “Wolf-pits” around the country.

Britons went on a kill frenzy. Hunt and kill bears and even though it would have been obvious to them that bears were dying out locally so they moved out to look for bears in other areas. Eventually the bears were wiped out to such an extent that ‘sport’ and ‘entertainment’ moved over to bear baiting. The same applied to wild boar and others. Eventually, town and village folk had to wait until the fayre arrived and they could watch some bull-baiting.

There is a lengthy chapter in The Red Paper 2022 looking at wolves but I think even naturalists and zoologists will be surprised by some of what it reveals.

Foxes were considered not worthy of sport. That is until wolves had been wiped out or were getting in low supply. We had three unique island species of fox –just as the wolf in the British Isles (which includes Ireland/Eire) was a unique island species; the largest seems to have been almost coyote like and was known as the Mountain or Greyhound fox. My colleague “LM” has gathered quite a collection of fox “masks” (heads) and even some full body taxidermy (at least two of these are historically important). From these we hope to convince a laboratory to one day carry our DNA work on hair samples –work that we cannot sadly fund ourselves.

This type of fox became popular as, unlike the smaller foxes, “it could give a good account of itself” –this is ‘sporting’ talk meaning that it would stand its ground when cornered and fight back and that does mean that hunt hounds would be wounded but they were essentially unimportant as the kill was what gave the huntsmen their “jollies”.

Some of these foxes were trapped and transported around the country and even to Ireland which, oddly, later provided the English hunts with some mountain foxes.

The next type of fox was shorter than the first but, as was the habit of people to name animals with certain characteristics of familiar ones. This was called the Bulldog or Mastiff fox. Both myself and LM are attempting to define a particular fox type characteristics and we are gradually getting there on a subject no one has ever covered before. My personal belief is that the term “Hill fox” may also have been applied to this type. Known as living further down the hill/mountainside I think that the mastiff fox moved to higher ground left vacant by the killing off of Mountain foxes. This is typical behaviour since a fox or group of foxes killed in one area is soon replaced by another (again, a topic discussed in The Red Paper 2022) and for the mastiff fox higher and rougher terrain meant a greater chance of survival.

The next for was the Common or Cur fox. Much smaller but unlike the foxes we see today, these foxes appear to have always lived near to human habitation and that is something we see with the New fox (European imports to replenish the extirpated UK foxes) both in the UK and in Europe where they replaced the Old European foxes.

I must point out that we are not talking about three separate fox species. It seems that there are people who jump up and down stating that this is what we are sating and interestingly this was what people were declaring in the late 19^th and early 20^th century.  No one is declaring we had three fox species because there is no DNA work on the matter and “a fox is just a fox” was the prevailing official dictum. Nearly every naturalist or zoologist was a ‘sportsmen’ who took notes but were overjoyed to kill anything and amass huge collection of seals, birds, foxes, wildcats and…even the odd domestic cat or dog they had shot. “A fox does this” or “a fox does that” is all we ‘learn’ Again, The red Paper 2022 will cover this in more detail.

Needless-to-say, when you have bounties on foxes (adult and cub) heads and ‘sport’ killing hundreds of foxes each year in some areas until they ceased to exist you had one proud faction happy to have “done their duty” (for money) and taken part in what was officially termed and promoted as “vulpicide”.  The second faction were the ‘sportsmen’ who claimed they were doing nothing more than having fun and there seems to have been a deep hatred of those digging out foxes for money.

Humans wiped out unique foxes and wolves, boar and even deer and hares were hunted to the point where they had to be imported from Europe to allow the ‘sport’ to continue.

I have not mentioned the badger. In fact the badger was another whose head paid a bounty. In the Lakelands of Cumbria it was proudly boasted that vulpicide had wiped out foxes and that what we can term “melecide” did likewise for the badger.  I have looked at the subject of badgers privately and I still cannot understand how the species survived when so many others did not. Badger baiting and some of its practices (that I will not detail here as they are quite horrific) was ongoing from at least the Medieval period and if this mass killing was going on from the Scottish Highlands to Cornwall just how did they survive?

Back in 1996 I suggested in an article that badgers had also been imported for sport but suspected that, as with foxes, the importation date might be further back that the 1600s. Britain was certainly exporting badgers to Ireland: Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute -Genetic evidence further elucidates the history and extent of badger introduction from Great Britain into Ireland (unfortunately published on 1^st April, 2020) https://www.afbini.gov.uk/news/genetic-evidence-further-elucidates-history-and-extent-badger-introduction-great-britain

   “…population genetic analyses have revealed that badgers with ‘British’ genetic heritage are localised in north-eastern and south-eastern counties in Ireland and that human-aided import of badgers from Great Britain, around 700 years ago, is the most probable explanation. Although anecdotal, it is notable that humans from these same regions in Ireland also exhibit genetic and genealogical links to Great Britain, an observation thought to result from the Plantations of Ireland that occurred in the 13th and 16th centuries.”

Once my work on the already mentioned book is finished and I have also finished my wildcats book I intend to look into the history of badgers in the UK and while badgers were exported so were foxes and England also imported foxes so if there is a “paper trail” I will find it. Badger baiting and hunting was part of ‘sport’ –it still continues illegally today with authorities seemingly unwilling to fully investigate and prosecute.

The continuing vulpicide still continues with people happily going out and shooting foxes every night around the country and where they are no threat to livestock –the only reason a farmer is permitted to kill them. Yet, weekly, the internet is full of photographs of foxes shot by ‘sportsmen’ and those killings are prosecutable under law as a fox in an empty field hunting rabbits is not threatening livestock.

The press and media and all the liberals in the UK can preach about how many species humans are killing off around the world but they turn a blind eye to the continuing killing of species in the UK and outdated policies of DEFRA. Of course, it is easier to have a cheese and wine party discussing the “ghastly killing of rhinos” because it’s all very exotic. What about the badger cubs killed brutally when only a few weeks old or fox cubs shot for ‘fun’ a couple miles away?

In the UK we have people who are not out of control fox feeding social media addicts but who keep local foxes under observation and some have done so for 20 plus years. If a fox is sick or injured they will treat or trap and get the animal treated by a vet, usually at a wildlife rescue. Veterinary practices are supposed to provide “First Vet” emergency care but it is not a legal obligation.

Here is the basic fact and if you do not like it then you can go and kiss your rear end: upwards of 80,000 foxes are killed each year in the UK through hunting, poisoning, snaring and car strike.  I believe that the UK fox population is currently at a crisis point and the population is far lower than various “guesstimates” put forward. If it were not for the fox watchers treating problems such as mange (which should be monitored), various injuries and rescuing fox cubs that are orphaned then the foxes in the UK would be beyond critical.

I will be naming and shaming vets that decide to refuse wildlife first aid in future. Telling someone who has been asked by a rescue to take it to a vet for emergency treatment to “Go put it back” is shameful. There are good vets out there who care about wildlife but for the majority it is about money and, as a couple told me, their lucrative “countryside clients”.

“Non interference with nature” may well sound good for some staged TV documentaries or where a “tragic death” pulls in the punters but we are talking about the real world. A world being ravaged by humans. A baby white rhino is found weak and defenceless because its mother was killed do the wildlife organisations walk away and leave it saying “let nature take its course”?  No. They help the baby rhino recuperate and get it ready for release in a protected area so that the species can survive because the rhino was in that situation because of other humans. Those people are protecting their native species under threat.

As far as I see it after 45 years of research and investigation that is exactly what fox watchers and rescues are doing.  However, they are doing so under severe financial pressure. Just two Face Book fox groups total over 30,000 members and to that can be added thousands of others from other groups and many congratulate and take advantage of free treatment from rescues. Imagine those people each donating £5.00 that would be £150,000 toward rescues and their work. Obviously not everyone can contribute as we are dealing with the real world but think of the difference even a £1.00 donation will make rather than 150 social media likes.

As an example I get told constantly that the Fox Deaths Project (unique in the UK) is “vital” and “very important to continue” and yet even requests for an old working freezer amongst naturalist groups in the City of Bristol has gone un-responded to after a year. We lose a lot of foxes because public buildings (such as where post mortems are carried out) close at weekends and bank holidays etc. People get annoyed at me because I will not pick up a dead fox even after I explain that we cannot store them (especially in summer).

Likewise the same comments regarding the British Fox Study and its ongoing work which drains already depleted non existent funds!

There are no grants for any of this work and there are no grants for wildlife rescues but people want all the work to be done for free. That is not a sign of a “nation of animal lovers” more like a nation of social media fans who just say “Let other people sort it –they will manage somehow”.

At this point I was to say THANK YOU if you do donate to rescues or help out in some way because that helps save more than just foxes and badgers.

Until we can sort out our own native wildlife it is posturing and posing to donate and jump onto a cause because it is in exotic Africa and there are lots of nice blue sky photographs.

If you do not want to help British wildlife then get off the planet.

Hypocrisy is being at home holding a glass of wine or sat watching The Blue Planet on TV and saying "how dreadful".

UKNCA

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/245424620670933

why I do not publish more research work online

 I was asked why I do not publish more research work online. The answer to that is quite simple: theft.

Over the years I have cooperated with university academics and others "above reproach" and they take what they want then close and bolt the door. They got what they wnted I can go drown in a cess-pool.

There are many bloggers and writers who have no compunction about stealing images and data that it has taken me decades to get hold of because I foolishly trusted them. A great deal that you will see online regarding exotic animals and menageries in the past was not generally known pre 2000. I worked long and hard and ruined my eye trawling through newspaper archives. Photographs as well. All used freely today without crediting the main researcher -me.

Money and ego are the main reasons for the stealing of data. It has become accepted that anything mentioned or posted to the internet can be taken and used uncredited even if it carries a copyright notice. Many of my own illustrations have been stolen offline and used with my signature removed.

Various amounts of information have been stolen from The Red Paper (2010) and used by people as their own work.

After I saw huge chunks actually taken from my research used by three "cryptozoologists" who blocked me when I challenged them I drew a line.

My work is published in book form containing all the reference sources any real researcher needs to build on. Once published the work is identified as my own and that clearly makes anyone "coming up" with the same data a thief.

The results of my work on wildcats as well as canids in the UK are to be published in two works this year and will not go on general sale until officially listed and documented on official sites.

I have spent over 40 years doing all of this and there is no funding or huge sales.  But I will be damned if I am going to allow more theft of work.

That is why I discuss some things but will not publish material on a medium that allows outright theft.

The Black Screenshot Means VLC

 I have a trail cam problem. Normally I take out the micro card and the video clips play in one program or another and the above is a typical example. However, the new cam will only play the clips in VLC which means no screenshot to tell you what is on the clip just a black screen. Take 30 clips and my time reviewing them goes from 15 minutes to an hour.

I cannot convert them from VLC but if I upload here, on You Tube or Face Book the clips are converted and viewable. Never had this before.

Like I say -a pain and time consuming.

Anyway, above is Sonic to entertain you!

Vet says "It was poisoned" -was it? And Ignoring First Veterinary Response Calls

 

As a quick follow on to the updated fox-badgers deaths post yesterday I have a few thoughts.

Firstly, we know that many vets (incidents are recorded) will refuse to see sick and injured wildlife as "first vet responder" before the animal is handed over to a rescue. For this reason it is highly likely that many cases of poisoning are going unreported. First vet response could save wildlife but "there is no money in it" for the vet. They are a business and not willing to give over time to "freebies".

In not providing "first vet response" the vet is ignoring what might be a disease or virus or poisoner which could kill domestic pets -their clients.

In future I shall name any veterinary practice that is reported to have refused treatment of wildlife as first vet responder. Not good publicity.

A vet declaring "Your pet has been poisoned using anti-freeze" raises more questions. It is the pet owners or person finding a fox that has died that is telling us this. Looking at it one way this could be made up rather like the anti-fox people keep claiming vixens carrying cubs are  carrying dead cats; based on evidence we know 100% of such claims are fake so how about poisonng claims?

A wildlife rescue in Kent claims two for cubs died from anti freeze poisoning according to their vet.  I contacyted them and asked for more details and was bloicked. WHY would they block a fox researcher of 40 plus years who is looking into fox deaths? 

Some 95% of foxes handled by the Fox Deaths Project have died for reasons that have nothing to do with poisons. In fact, poisoning seems at the bottom of the list and this may be because people are just not bothering reporting dead foxes or wait a few days before alerting us at which time we are into the "maggot surprise" stage.

How without carrying out tests is a vet able to declare any animal was killed by bait laced with anti-freeze?   With the Fox Deaths Project we have had a first response vet declare a fox has been poisoned -it was not.

We are perfectly aware that there are pro fox hunt vets and practices and the fact that they are trained in animal care but support cruel sports seems a contadiction until the word "money" pops up. I had three different vets refuse flatly to help a sick fox because "most of our clientele are farmers and horse people".

If a vet claims that any animal has been poisoned then that is a potential crime -a wildlife crime if a badger or fox is involved. Vets should be obliged to report such incidents and not fudge around the question when asked later. Not reporting a known case of poisoning is actually aiding and abetting the poisoner in which case if it is shown that a vet diagnosed poisoning but did not contact the police to report such that vet should be prosecuted alongside the poisoner. 

With cats kidney and liver problems are not uncommon. A cat might seem a "bit off" get better but then hit a downward spiral until collapsing and dying. I have owned cats and I can assure you that none of them had access to poisons or anti-freeze (just not very good vets). It is for this reason that any vet declaring a death by poison should report the incident to the police and also take samples that can be laboratory tested to confirm poisoning.

There are good vets out there and I have been helped by them, however, the majority appear totally disinterested in wildlife or helping in any way.

From now on there will be public naming and shaming and for each incident a complaint will be officially made to the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. I encourage others coming across such neglect of duty to do likewise.

The British Fox Study

 

1 The Fox Study was set up in 1976 by noted naturalist and historian Terry Hooper-Scharf in Bristol and eventually encompassed looking at not just the natural history of foxes in the United Kingdom but the mass importation of foxes from Europe for hunting and this included studying jackals, wolves and coyotes as well as other exotics that were living wild in the UK after release for the purpose of hunting..

2 The preliminary work of 1976-2011 was published as The Red Paper: Canids and is the only work of its kind published on this subject matter and has revealed many forgotten and even unknown facts about canids in the UK.

3 The Fox Study is continuing and taking in not just Old Fox types but the New Foxes and looking how the North American Red fox (NARF) and others may create another New British fox type.

4 Modern books on foxes without fail all refer to the "little red fox" we know today; the long, short, tall and various coloured pellages. This is not a true British fox with ancient roots going back into history; it is what I classed as a New Fox. Looking at illustrated Medieval English texts you will see the fox depicted as overall grey or brown in colour with, in some cases, perhaps a lighter underside. Those are Old Fox types.

5 Over the past 4 decades I have worked with people at universities as well as students studying for PhDs and the usual method seems to be to quote from previous works and then add your own viewpoint or theory to that. Basically, one person copies from someone who copied from a person who before them had been copying from someone else. Therefore they do not come across the really old books and journals that show a far more factual history of foxes –most are unaware that foxes were even imported into the UK. I have a big library of fox hunting books as well as old natural history books from the 18th-early 20th century. If I did not I would only know about the "little red dog" that became thefox type by the early 1900s.

6 There were three main fox types that can be classed as what I call Old Fox types and I need to make it clear that I am not claiming that these were different fox species but foxes that had adapted to their habitat.

7 The first was the Greyhound/Hill/Mountain Fox -tall, long legged and lived at higher altitudes and was a greyish colour though research is showing that pellage colour may have varied: brown flecked with grey may also have been a common colouring. This fox seemed confined to mountains and hills although when it moved onto moors or grasslands its speed was so fast that it was termed a "Greyhound fox" -for obvious reasons. Other terms for this type of fox may have applied.

8 The second type was smaller than the Hill fox and more "robustly built" and was referred to as a mastiff or bulldog fox. I can find no illustrations of this type of fox but it was, like the Hill fox sturdy and "gave a good show of itself" when trapped -meaning it fought back against the hounds and hounds were severely injured or died from would inflicted by both foxes.

9 The Third type was the Cur (common) fox which was smaller and the most common seen and would, once again, be a uniform colour.

10 We know that in the 18th century Old Fox types were being hunted to the point of extinction. Therefore many thousands were imported each year to "re-stock" hunting countries (Englandwas divided up into areas owned and considered private fox hunting areas or "countries"). France, Germany, Russia and other European countries where fox hunting was not an organised 'sport' sold foxes to dealers and the 19th century press report on news snippets such as "twenty foxes are being shipped by cart to Leeds.

11 By the late 19th century the Old Fox types were seen as facing extinction as the captive bred and protected red foxes took over countries both North and South. From the mid 19th century many of the 'great sportsmen' were making it clear that the Old Foxes were becoming extinct and their reaction was to still hunt. Research shows that it is highly likely that the Old foxes became extinct by the 1880s according to naturalist-hunters.

12 It is possible that the Old and New foxes interbred so that each hunting generation saw the latest type as, say, a Hill fox when it was not. Later large foxes I believe are just variations found in New foxes and not indicators that Mountain foxes lived on into the 1940s -some may have survived until the late 19th century by taking to higher ground where there was no hunting.

13 I think there may have been more than three Old Fox types -each evolving for its specific habitat and the accounts of Old Hill foxes seem almost to describe a near coyote type. In fact, research has shown and proven that jackals, coyotes and wolves were released for hunting purposes well into the early 20th century.

15 Via research as well as examination of 19th century taxidermy it is clear that there are aspects of Old foxes that vary from the New fox; in some the head shape varies and it is quite clear that dentition also varied and that includes in the rather robust appearance of the teeth. The only way of finding out what an Old Fox type might have looked like is to find mounted specimens and we need to go back as far as we can with these to avoid misidentifying Old-New crosses.

16 To date some specimens have been acquired but these are not sufficient for us to carry out hair DNA study. A large number of modern fox hair has been gathered as a sampling when DNA work can be carried out. However, to acquire fox masks (mounted heads) and full specimens is beyond current finances. The British Canid Historical Society was set up as the research and educational side of the Fox Study and this has led to cooperation with wild canid researchers in other countries

17 In 2021, after a great deal of hard work in getting official backing, the Study set up the fox deaths Project. This involves the collection of non road traffic casualty foxes within the City of Bristolthat fit a criteria and are submitted for official post mortem (Wildlife Network for Disease Surveillance, Post Mortem Services, Bristol Veterinary School University of Bristol and other bodies). To date the post mortem examination of dead foxes has revealed incidents of babesia and other causes of death from which we are learning a great deal. There has been no other such project in the UK. Obviously, without official approval none of the 18 foxes so far submitted would have been examined as costs are prohibitive.

18 The Fox study along with the BCHS has led the way in advising on fox/wildlife health issues and treatments as well as the various legal aspects surrounding them and the work has been followed by many bodies and groups. Again, this makes the Fox Study and BCHS the only organisation of its kind in the UK.

19 All of this work has been carried out (excepting the post mortems) from “out of pocket” (personal) funds which are stretched. What we need is some form of grant funding that will enable us to :

(a) Study the past history of British foxes and how impacted on the environment etc

(b) Clearly identify, via DNA work as well as actual physical taxidermy examples, what the lost Old foxes looked like and ascertain the uniqueness of the Old foxes that were isolated from the European mainland for millennia.

(c) Continue to educate the public on the red fox, the history of foxes as well as their place as good indicators of the eco-system and to afford them more protection.

(d) To provide a future online virtual museum that can continue the education on wild canids from the UKs past, present and future.

20 The work begun in 1976 is ongoing and it will be carried on by others at some point and expanded to include research into the fact that the little red dog was not the common fox of Western Europe where Old Fox types seem to have existed similar to those in the UK.

21 If there are any specific questions then please feel free to ask and I shall answer to the best of my ability.

Terry Hooper-Scharf

The British Fox Study & British Canid Historical Society

Email: blacktowercg@hotmail.com