The Red Paper 2022 Volume I: Foxes, Jackals, Wolves, Coyotes and Wild Dogs of the United Kingdom and Ireland

 

361 pp

Paperback

Interior Color & Black and white

Dimensions A4 (8.27 x 11.69 in / 210 x 297 mm

£25.00

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 When the Doggerland bridge flooded the British Isles became separated from

Continental Europe and its wildlife developed uniquely. The British Isles, for the purpose of this work

includes Ireland, and isolated the wolves on both became what would be island species not affected by

the usual island dwarfism. These wolves, after millennia. Became “unwanted” and forests and woodland

was burnt down or cut down for the specific purpose of lupicide; the killing of every and any wolf –and

there was a bounty for “a job well done”.

At the same time there also developed three unique island species of Old fox from the coyote-like

Mountain or Greyhound fox, the slightly smaller but robustly built Mastiff or Bulldog fox and the

smaller Common or Cur fox –the latter like today’s red foxes had a symbiotic relationship with humans.

These canids were mainly ignored until it was decided that they could provide fur and meat and those

things earn money. From that point onward, especially after all other game had been killed off, the fox

faced what writers over the centuries referred to as vulpicide –extermination through bounties paid,

trapping or hunting and despite all the hunters noting that the Old foxes were nearing extinction they

continued to hunt until by the late 1880s the Old were gone and replaced by the New –foxes imported

by the thousands every year for the ‘sport’ of fox hunting and this importation also led the the UK

seeing the appearance of mange (unknown before the importations).

The travelling British sportsmen went coyote, wolf and jackal hunting and on returning to England

wanted to bring a taste of this to “the good old country”. Wolves, jackals and coyotes were set up in

hunting territories from where they could learn the lay of the land and provide good sport later. Some

hunts even attempted to cross-breed foxes, jackals and Coyotes. Then there were the legendary –almost mythical– “beasts”; the black beast of Edale, the killer canids of

Cavan and the “girt dog” of Ennerdale. In more recent times raccoon dogs and arctic foxes have appeared in the UK; some released for ‘sport’

while others are exotic escapees long since established in the countryside. If you thought you knew what fox hunting was about prepare to be woken up by a sharp slap to the face

and the reality that, by admissions of hunts themselves, this was all about fun and sport and nothing to

do with “pest control”.