I began the British Fox Study in 1976 and soon found a lot of incorrect information was being pushed out by 'experts'. However, to try to make my mark I wanted to show how the "old countryman's tales" of there once being very large foxes was a myth. Over the next 34 years I searched newspaper and book archives as well as accumulating my own library and in 2010 I published the first Reds Paper.
The first Red Paper showed that there were indeed Old type British foxes but they had been hunted into extinction by the 1860s. I also found that thousands of foxes were imported into the UK each year to replenish "hunting stock" -the descendants of these are the red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) that we see today.
I also discovered that jackals, coyotes and even wolves were released by hunts and in many cases some hunt supporters attempted to cross breed to make a better hunting animal. It is a very long and complicated story but I fully documented the history and everything was fully referenced.
But it is said that a picture or photo can speak a thousand words. The search to find specimens of the Old fox types (for which I found anecdotal evidence of them also being in Europe at one time) seemed to be impossible. John Colquhoun shot a Mountain fox (the largest of the foxes) in the mid 1830s and one of his books contained an artist's drawing of this. But artists can often add to a subject, however, in this case the artist (unknown) was 100% spot on and this can be stated as photographs of the very fox appeared on an auction site and the accuracy was striking. The Extinct6 Fox and Wild Cats Museum now possesses the fox in question plus what6 appear to be a couple similar specimens.
The fact that it could be proven that we had three variants of a fox in the UK interested no one. The fact that anecdotal evidence showed similar fox was in Western Europe at one point also interested no one. Dogma draws in the money.
The interest in jackals, coyotes, wolves as well as wolf-dog hybrids saw me look at cases from the United States (with wildlife and other bodies cooperating) and Europe. With the scope of work increasing the British Fox Study became the British Fox and Wild Canid Study in 2019.
Similarly the work started with the Wild Cats and Feral Study in 1980 resulted in decades of work leading to the clear identification of what the wild cats in the UK looked like originally and, again, the Extinct Fox and Wild Cats Museum have specimens of these.
Work in 2000 looked at and stated that there was indeed a wild cat on the island of Corsica and this was dismissed as myth until in 2023 zoologists found and identified the wild cat. Island cats have always been something that has fascinated me.
https://foxwildcatwolverineproject.blogspot.com/2023/06/mysterious-corsican-cat-fox-revealed-as.html
And foxes -there was a fox on Hong Kong that was hunted to extinction under colonial rule. No museum or HK based naturalists had any idea of the fox type and there appeared to be no historical photographic references to the fox. It took many years but I eventually identified the fox type that had been made extinct as a relative of one from Southern China.
A list of other things discovered or achieved can be found in this post
https://foxwildcatwolverineproject.blogspot.com/2023/09/an-overview-and-what-we-have-discovered.html
But there is more. For many years the one thing I had noted was the decline in numbers of foxes -cars and shooters claim many but I was concerned at the number of foxes being reported as "poisoned" in the city where I live, Bristol. Was it poisoning or a disease of some kind? It took a lot of "discussion" but I was then told that I could submit unusual or suspicious fox death cases for post mortem examination. The Bristol Fox Deaths Project ran from 2021-2024 and was the only one of its kind in the UK -and it made some very interesting discoveries including what may be killing a lot of young foxes each year.
In 2023 the official Bristol Fox and Badger Deaths Registers were started to list all reported deaths and where possible highlight wildlife death hot spots -which they did. The registers are ongoing projects.
Sadly, with badgers the UK Health an d Safety Executive refuse to allow post mortems to be carried out under the 'threat' of bovine TB.
To all of this can be added the work I did as a UK police forces exotic wildlife consultant between 1977-2018. This work, specifically on "non native cats", also saw me consulted buy German police forces and agencies in Australia. My name is on several technical papers on the subject presented to conferences in the United States.
All of this has been unfinanced/sponsored work and without any association with a university or college -although a good few have benefitted from my work.
The next natural step is DNA work on the Old wild cat and fox specimens which is, once again, beyond our financial means. Looking at European Old type foxes has been interesting and a few discoveries made there.
That is the work and the situation as things roll on slowly because no one or organisation funds work of this type on foxes or wild cats.
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