The Fox Deaths Project is NOT funded. It gets no cooperation from Bristol City Council (who are more obstructive). I work with a colleague who has a full time job as well as the animal rescue work and the living take precedent over dead.
People have this idea that we are a refuse collection scheme that will go out and pick up maggot infested and decomposing foxes in their gardens. "I've had this dead fox in my garden four days and the Council expect me to put it into a bin bag -can you collect?" and even "Well I can't see the point in contacting you about a dead fox if you are not going to pick it up" (the fox had been there a week). It is almost abusive at times but the sad thing is a lot of animal charities get this type of thing and mainly from people who have never helped support them in the past. Pure ignorance and "Why should I support them" attitude.
Hoaxers. We ask that if a dead fox is found that you take a photo of it in situ. That tells us a lot and helps assess whether it fits our criteria. There are people in Bristol who -for their own reasons- collaborate on trying to hoax us and have my colleague drive across the City to find...nothing. We do not ask for a dead fox photo because we collect them for fun.
Carcasses have to be fairly fresh. We have no freezing or cold storage facility and so we have to let any dead foxes reported Friday-Sunday go. The post mortem facility goes by normal time tables and closes 1630 hrs Friday until 0900hrs Monday. Rigor mortis and then decomposition start fairly quickly -in hot weather its fast! The post mortem examinations on dead foxes so far totals into the thousands and I had to fight to get system to accept that this was a necessary project and dumping rotting carcasses on a pathologist would soon see things grind to a halt.
If a fox is found dead by the side of the road or on the pavement then it may look untouched externally but we know the damage is all internal so unless we spot something in a photo such as yellowish/greenish tint to gums we give it a pass. Personally I would take every dead fox and have it examined as we might learn more, however, we have one very busy and top notch pathologist who has gone well beyond what we expected. To dump what are obvious RTA foxes would be an abuse of our agreement.
I do not drive so, if we can and a fox interests us we will try to collect it. However, my colleague has a full time job with long commute and if she is called out to rescue wildlife that takes time and if it's cold weather it might be possible to check the fox next day but in hot weather decomp sets in quicker.
This all applies to dead badgers, also, but we can only retrieve for post mortem IF there are suspicious circumstances (due to H&S the pathologist would have to carry out a PM in the garden).
There are two of us -one VERY active "us"- and we can only do so much. Any badger deaths or fox deaths ARE recorded and mapped but we don't even get the support animal charities so until the big money person donates £1 million we aren't changing!
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