Did British Fox Hunting Wipe Out British AND European Old Foxes?

 With little feedback from Europe  the work is still ongoing but has gathered enough information, even be it anecdotal, to draw certain conclusions.

We know from old paintings, etc., that there were Old type foxes in Western Europe.  These seem to be similar if not the same (without DNA evidence we are just guessing) as Old British foxes but whether there were variations based on the geographic environment in the UK we cannot say.

We know that Norwegian foxes were imported into the UK for hunting because the 'sportsmen' write about it in books and other literature and even comment on their appearance/speed. That the current experts in Norway do not know this is not surprising since we are a small island and yet our 'experts' still think mountain foxes were a myth. The likeliest place that such foxes were imported into for sale/distribution is Hull as it had a lot of established trade with Scandinavia. See A History Of Hull by Tim Lambert

 https://localhistories.org/a-history-of-hull/

It was said that the Norwegian fox was taller than the mountain fox and faster yet by the time they were being imported and written about the Old mountain foxes were gone (probably by the 1860s). All that would be on the mountains by the time of the importations would be the remnants/descendents of the previously imported red foxes.

We know that in the later 19th century foxes became scarce enough that hunts sent their own people to Europe to trap and bring back foxes -this to cut out the middlemen and it seems those middlemen and their own contacts were unhappy with British hunts traipsing all over them. Interestingly in the early 1900s the theft of foxes from Irish hunt territories was raised in Parliament. One might wonder why foxes needed importing if the hunts had done their job and rid the country of 'vermin' (a hunt term)?

We can assume, based on what we have learnt, that various waves of population movements from the East and through Central Europe were accompanied by hunting (foxes not just for fur but also food) and establishing small camps then villages and towns. This would basically be the migration that red foxes follow as history has shown that the species, like jackals, follow human movement -the amount of food waste as well as rodents attracted to the waste making a good and reliable food source.

This human expansion took centuries and as expansion took place native wildlife was hunted and a large fox provided fur and meat -in France country folk were still eating fox meat in the 19th century- and as we know where foxes are killed off so the red fox moves in and we have seen similar in the 21st century. In Norway the "native" fox is seen as the arctic fox which is smaller than the red fox and as humans have expanded habitation into the mountains the red fox has followed. This, of course, puts a strain on the arctic fox.

That there was a larger Norwegian fox seems to be beyond doubt but it is up to researchers there to find the taxidermy or physical evidence as we have in the UK. There is every possibility that the Norwegian foxes were the last of the Old European foxes. If that is correct then the UK not only wiped out its own Old foxes but what were left of the Old foxes in Europe.

Once gone that is it. Extinction is forever and there is no using DNA to "bring back" the Old fox because as we have seen; the "reintroduction" of a species to old habitats only leads to their inevitable demise (by human effort).

The work requires a combined effort and mainly it requires someone who actually gives a damn or is interested in foxes and their history. However, after almost fifty years I still find the "They're just foxes" attitude prevailing.