For an "environment reporter" Ms Horton certainly is ill informed. Firstly, the absolute crackpot claim that the fox population has boomed. Even the British Trust for Ornithology after its mammal survey suggested that the decline in the fox population should see them Red Listed. Estimates of population loss are 60-70% and in some areas of the countryside foxes are no longer seen and in Wales photographers are finding so few that they travel to Bristol to photograph them.
Bristol alone loses around 300 foxes a year on the roads and the decline is noticeable.
I assume Ms Horton's info comes via the Countryside Alliance? Oh, who is is destroys and damages more nests each year? Humans. Hunts run across fields and what nests do not get trampled on by horses the hounds will sort out. Many farmers hate the various protected birds and do not want them on their land so...destroy nests and say "bloody foxes" and you are covered. Reintroduced and protected birds of prey are also shot and poisonbed when they establish nests -I assume that'll be the foxes?
The fox, badger and hedgehog are all heading for extinction if not near extinction by the 2030s and the cause of that, as with MANY other species in the UK, are humans -perhaps Ms Horton ought to read some actual facts?
https://foxwildcatwolverineproject.blogspot.com/2024/01/how-many-animals-killed-on-uk-roads.html
Scapegoating a species to sideline what humans are doing has resulted in over 300,000 badgers culled and it makes no different except everyone gets money in their pockets. Add the thousands killed on our roads and you have a full on no one cares extinction program with unpaid volunteers (drivers).
If you are going to publish something make sure it is factual and not covering up for the damage humans are doing. For Ms Horton and The Guardian here is some extra information:
"Fact: something that is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists, or about which there is information: No decision will be made until we know all the facts."
You are welcome
Helena Horton Environment reporterShould we be organising mass culls of foxes and crows in the UK in order to save the plummeting numbers of curlews? That is the argument put forward by certain bird conservation groups.
The curlew, one of Britain’s most charismatic birds, with its curved beaks and distinctive call, has been disappearing from the countryside, declining by 60% in 25 years. It is just one of a number of ground-nesting birds that is vanishing – research has found that ground nesters are 86% more likely to decline than birds with other nesting strategies.
The root of the problem is complex. Farming practices such as running heavy machinery down fields to cut grass for silage are partly to blame for the decline. The machines chop up the eggs and chicks hidden in the grass.
But the additional issue is that the way humans manage the UK countryside has caused a population boom of foxes, crows and other mesopredators in some areas, which is putting ground-nesting birds at risk.
Over centuries, most large predators such as eagles, lynx and wolves, which would usually keep the numbers of foxes and crows under control, have been hunted in the UK to extinction or near extinction. Farming practices have meant plentiful food for foxes and crows is left in fields, from crops to animal carcasses, including the tens of millions of fat, domesticated, easy-to-catch pheasants released every year for shooting.
These mesopredators like to feed on the eggs and young of ground-nesting birds. So is it time to talk about a fox cull, asks the conservationist and writer Mary Colwell, who runs the charity Curlew Action? She has been campaigning to save the curlew for years, and although she hates the idea of shooting a fox and would never do it herself, she suggests a “serious conversation” needs to be had.
“Curlew chicks and eggs are incredibly vulnerable to the activities that we do on the ground,” she told the Groundswell farming conference earlier this summer. “So when I say curlews have declined by 60% in 25 years, it’s not that the adults are dying. Adults survive really, really well; it’s that they cannot get enough eggs and chicks away to replace the population.”
She says an increasing number of conservationists feel culls may be the only solution. “In the UK we have huge numbers of what’s called mesopredators. Every single one of those creatures is an absolutely wonderful bit of Britain’s natural history in its own right. But there are so many now, and the decline of ground-nesting birds is so severe, that the two are coming together to create a catastrophe for ground-nesting creatures. There is a huge agreement on how to protect red-listed birds like curlews, and predator control is absolutely central to that.
“I couldn’t do it. I can’t lift a gun and shoot a fox. But I know it needs to be done if we want curlews, and that’s the societal question.”
But some disagree that predator control is the answer. Dr Ruth Tingay, co-director of the campaign group Wild Justice, said: “Lethal control of some generalist predatory species will not solve the long-term issue of their over-abundance, which is a direct result of the mismanagement of our countryside.
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