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)
"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
"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
You may now be wondering what this has to do with foxes and
wildcats in the
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 10th 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
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
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 19th and early 20th 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
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
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 1st 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
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
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
In the
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
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
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".
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