The British Fox Study Has Uncovered The TRUE History of Old Foxes -How Much More Can We Do?

 

At the moment we have submitted 80 foxes for necropsies (post mortem examinations) although two were actually lost at the pathology lab.  We have maintained a strict chain of evidence highlighting where a fox was found, why it was suitable for PM and then where the animal is stored, collected, on its way to deliver to the lab and then when it is delivered our part is done and documented.  So when I refer to two lost foxes in future: We never lost them!

 

I am told, however, that these necropsies will no longer be carried out (long story but it is not an APHA/WNDS dictate).

 

We have learnt a lot about foxes, health issues and many clues are there as to why the population has declined (idiots shooting them for ‘fun’, out of control or deliberate dog attack and cars add deaths to the list). In some other countries even a fox (any wildlife) killed on the roads undergoes PM examination as a matter of course but the UK is so far behind on animal welfare and conservation we will never see this happen (penny pinching is always a good reason).

 

The thing that most people outside the UK cannot understand is why no established bodies or organisations are willing to cooperate in any way –after all the British Fox Study (the British Fox and Wild Canid Study for the last few years) was set up in 1976 and I have documented all of the research work and broken down dogma on foxes so that we finally have a true history of British foxes. Does that not prove how serious the study is?

 

No.

 

We have specimens of the Old now extinct British fox as well as the wild cat and have for some time now been asking and appealing for any DNA labs that can carry out DNA studies (which we simply cannot afford) but any letters/emails are never replied to.  A call to UK museums was 90% fruitless as they only had post 1900 red foxes.  Messages to European museums (with one exception) have been subject to outright dismissal if responded to at all and one ‘expert’ who “studied” red foxes for 30 years would not even consider looking in his museum’s collection for any pre red fox taxidermies (after all his reputation was built on red foxes being the original European fox which they are not.

 

You might think that the possibility of making DNA or other discoveries, opportunities for papers and funding might create some interest but it does not.

 

Even with a 49 year long study and two books on foxes and wildlife research institutes and Research Gate will not accept the Study. You HAVE to be with a university or big commercial company to be accepted and no college or university has the old style biology departments as they were not “sexy” enough to draw in funding.

 

Despite the Bristol Fox Deaths Project –the only one of its kind in the UK (past and present)- that works with the WNDS (Wildlife Network for Disease Surveillance) and APHA (Animal Plant Health Agency), a university and veterinary school and my contact and work with wildlife departments and zoologists around the world the British Fox and Wild Canids Study is…nothing.

 

That is the UK.

 

Really, the Study needs funding for further research work or a lab willing to carry out DNA testing on hair samples because, although the history of Old foxes is fully documented and that we have taxidermy examples we need the harder science to add more.

 

As it stands all we can do is keep documenting the history and that is it. There is no public support and whereas EU funding for projects is there it goes to mainly groups with far younger people (I know that as a fact from the years of applying for grants).

 

Bleak but at least we know the true history of British foxes that were hunted to extinction, even while hunters knew they were dying out, during the Victorian era.