16 February 2025 -16 February 2026 Fox Death Totals

 By this time in 2025 I had recorded 69 dead foxes on Bristol roads.

I have just recorded the 44th fox death this year.

So fox deaths are falling? No. People are still not bothering to report dead foxes and there were different factors in last6 year's high total.

Last year's fox count included the Blaise Castle dog attack and some illnesses.

This year's seem more car related so it works out more if we get rid of "natural causes". The one thing that is guaranteed is that Friday-Sunday night the kill rate rises. Even in "quiet little roads" with bends and turns that mean the drivers would not be able to stop in time if they saw a dog walker crossing the road.

During daylight on Ashton Drive (Ashton Vale area) I have observed not one or two but up to four drivers at a time speed as family groups or couples are crossing the road. No attempt to slow down. At night the sound of speeding cars and screeching brakes are clearly heard (foxes have been killed). The problem is that this road once had speed bumps along its full length but the council removed them and said it would be too expensive to replace them. Long winding track is perfect for speeder 'fun'.

We KNOW the danger points for wildlife on Bristol roads but neither the Labour or the Green party run council could care less.

Last year we had a high number of pregnant vixens killed and when you start having a breeding population wiped out it means fewer foxes and I think that we have hit that point in Bristol. The population is dropping drastically on a national level and the same can be said locally.

Bristol Wildlife Rescue

 

The Internet Rarely Gets it Right

 

Regarding the previous posting about bounties on the Isle of Mull including for foxes and badgers I asked Google AI for information on foxes on Mull:

"There are no foxes on the Isle of Mull, a notable absence among Scottish islands, though they were reportedly hunted to extinction centuries ago, with pine martens filling a similar ecological niche today, often mistaken for foxes due to similar droppings. While you won't find native foxes, Mull boasts abundant wildlife like otters, deer, sea eagles, and various seabirds, making it a prime destination for nature lovers. "

"Centuries ago" so why were there bounties in the 19th century?

According to the Isle of Mull "wildlife on Mull"

"There are no foxes on Ulva and although the Vikings may have seen wolves (naming the island ‘Ullfur’ or ‘Wolf Island’) there have been none around lately."

They do not mention badgers and otters are a rare sight.  So it looks as though those bounties made foxes and badgers extinct on the island [if you read The Red Paper you will find that this may not be quite true].

What does this all prove? NEVER EVER trust an internet search as the AI is far from reliable  on even whether Thursday follows Wednesday and literally picks up bad info from online sources.  It also shows that whoever put the website together for Mull had no knowledge of the wildlife driven to extinction by islanders but then, not good publicity for an island.

Archive research whether newspapers, magazines and journals or books cannot be replace by very poor information on the internet that is copied and pasted  endlessly.

Sweden Stops Wolf Hunting ...hopefully permanently

 

When People Were Paid To Kill Wildlife

 

 Although hunts play a major part in wildlife extinctions it is very unpopular to correct dogma. As I am not looking for popularity let me correct major dogma. 

"It was the rich and upper classes that hunted and killed for fun and wiped out a lot of wildlife" 

Well, to an extent but along with all the well to do men and women were the normal every day folk who may well have killed for 'fun' but the main intention was to earn "easy money".  In The Red Papers I noted the various bounties paid for killing  foxes, badgers, otters and so on and these were bounties paid out all over the country. In The Scottish Annals of Natural History (1895) Vol 15 page 193:

Yes, everything could be killed including house (pet) cats and before anyone thinks that would be a rarity well 6d back then bought a lot and if you didn't like next door's moggy and you saw it walking about...easy pickings. Game keepers, of course, relished shooting anything but pet cats and pet dogs were included (there is a black joke, albeit factual, that gamekeepers always had great fruit and vegetable crops because of the "fertilizer" -cats and dogs they had shot).

So do not just blame organised and casual hunting for 'fun' but remember everyday ordinary folk killed off wildlife for fun and profit, too (motorists today kill off thousands of foxes, badgers,m otters, cats, dogs, deer and other species without even giving it a second thought so not much changes).