An Angry Note

 This was just sent out to all Bristol wildlife groups online. Angry does not cover how I am feeling.

"I am finding it really hard to believe that after all of these months I am having to write this again.

I set up the British Fox Study in 1976, based in Bristol.

This year I attempted to monitor the mange outbreak in Bristol via local Face Book wildlife groups. One or two helpful people but the biggest response was negative and eventually the study was dropped.

In June I was made aware of seemingly healthy foxes dying suddenly. Poison was strongly suspected or, possibly a disease. Official bodies such as the Wildlife Incident Investigation Scheme, DEFRA etc were all disinterested. I spent every day and even until 2-3 am to get evidence and material together and push and pester these bodies until I got Post Mortem Services to accept foxes for investigation. This cost time, money and some of my health.

Bristol City Council refused to cooperate when the investigation started indicating poison was involved. Two fox carcasses were seen by witnesses to have been picked up by the council which then told me it had no record of them (after the street clean team told me they had them). Another fox “went missing” from a council storage site. For this reason BCC was no longer informed about these dead foxes.

We discovered via post mortems that two out of three foxes (therefore notable) had unexplained jaundice –this investigation is ongoing and involves experts in Europe. The most recent fox was found to have been poisoned and this involved international cooperation –an official report was presented to the WIIS for further action.

Every step of the way I have reported on the incidents to alert everyone and explain what is going on and what has been found out.

I am HERE you can contact me via Messenger and if the fox death matches the criteria we have it can be collected for post mortem. Contacting unofficial bodies that cannot carry out post mortems and all the testing is pointless. They mostly have shown no interest in the Bristol cases. The City Council will just collect and incinerate and the evidence is gone.

I can arrange the collections and deal with all the official forms and know that the dead fox will be thoroughly investigated. The police play no part in this as they have been extremely unhelpful to say the least and the term “Wildlife Crime” is used to describe a suspected poisoning and whether deliberate or accidental is up to the pathologist to decide.

After all these months I thought everyone would be on board with this but instead I get attitude.

I may very well just opt out of the entire investigation because if I cannot rely on the support of local wildlife groups then what is the point –let the foxes and badgers carry on getting poisoned."

Keep Quiet And Protect Local Wildlife

  Working in wildlife and being a naturalist means that you are in a war.

No exaggeration.

We have foxes still being hunted cruelly and if someone local to a hunt protests over it -simply stating "I do not approve of hunting"- then they and their families can become victims to bulling, trolling online and even have deliberate damage caused to property -and be assaulted. In the case of protesting against badger baiting (supposedly illegal since the badger is a protected species) opponents cannot just be beaten up but be scarred for life by weapons.

That is what pro hunt people do to humans.

When it comes to badgers and foxes there is no such thing as cruelty -it is stated in many 'sports' books from the "Golden Age of Hunting" in the19th century that it is cruel however there is "the pleasure derived from the sport". Cruelty to their own hounds and horses is of little consequence -just animals.

I am, not going to get into an anti-hunting post since the 'sport' (as they still call it openly) wiped out the native British Old Fox types by the late 19th century and that after all the 'sportsmen'-authors noted how hunting was driving those foxes to extinction...they carried on killing in the most idiotic way -breeding pairs, cubs and even pregnant vixens -it was part of the 'sport'.

We know that pro hunt supporters are seeded into wildlife groups on social media such as Face Book and they watch wildlife blogs closely. There is no secret about this. Therefore the rule should always be never ever give out the location of badgers or foxes. The number of badgers sold to taxidermists that are all "road kill" is suspicious. But we know foxes and badgers are snared, poisoned and killed in other ways.

Yes, take photos of badgers or foxes and share but -again- never ever give out lovcations let alone as I have seen on groups "this badger comes along Any Road by Any Park every night at 9pm" which gives location and when the badger can be sighted and followed.

It may sound like a broken record but protect local wildlife!

"Why Do Things Take So Long?"

In the past six months I have been working on average every day some 14-15 hours 
attempting to get through official resistance over dead foxes to coordinating efforts when a dead fox is found and also advising people on sick or injured foxes -often having to find wildlife rescues close to them to help.

I also spend a great deal of time chatting with people about foxes and gathering data on fox health, behaviour and (a lot) what you can feed a fox.  Curiously I also get to gather a lot of information on badgers but have also had to answer queries on squirrels, hedgehogs and even on building or creating wildlife gardens.

There is no such thing as funding for this work. Every expense comes out of my own pocket which has a lot of holes in it 😄

I had hoped that The Red Paper might sell enough to fund ongoing research but it seems that very few people want to read books on foxes or the history of foxes or other canids in the UK. there is a Paypal donation box but after 10 years it's still full of...internet dust.

I get asked why I don't do "this" or "that" and the reason is financial. The current research is making leaps and bounds but cost restrictions are...restricting -I'm a writer you know 😂

Because of the dead foxes found this year the research is currently 6 months behind and I had hoped to get at least a couple of papers out this year including the Feral and Hybrid Cats and Wolverine update. 

I'll get there eventually

BS10 Fox Post Mortem Results

 Results from the post mortem on the last fox collected a rather large fox (ruler is 18 inches long).

PathologistComment:

"The bodily condition of this fox together with a full stomach would indicate that it died of a fairly acute condition and that intestinal haemorrhage with digested blood extending from the stomach to the anus was the likely cause of death. Discussion with wildlife vets in UK and continental Europe and with toxicologists would suggest that second-generation anticoagulants (SGARs) could cause atypical anticoagulant posioning such as in this fox. This is probably the main differential diagnosis.

Natural England will now take this as a WIIS case and tissue samples will be sent away next week for toxicology.

Further Work:  Histopathology  Toxicology

So after all of its lack of interest and putting up all of its "don't care" arguments WIIS (Wildlife Incident Investigation Scheme are stepping in. We might have well had far more evidence before now had they bothered back in June.

So now I wait to see what happens (I doubt I will be informed). Second-generation anticoagulants to be less vague five SGARs are currently authorised for use in the United Kingdom - difenacoum, bromadiolone, brodifacoum, flocoumafen and difethialone.

https://onlinefoxforum.wixsite.com/foxes/about

Did 63,000 Foxes "Vanished" In 2018?

 I found this to be very interesting and it was posted by Maria Mia on a Face Book fox group:

"Foxes have been documented in Britain's southern urban areas since the 1930s. The expansion of these areas during the interwar period created an ideal new habitat with an abundance of food.

The number of foxes living across the UK isn't officially recorded, however a 2013 report by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) estimates that there are around 430,000 - roughly one fox for every 150 people in the UK.

The number in urban areas is thought to have increased from 33,000 in 1995 to 150,000 in 2017. However, in 2018 there was a 42% decline in red foxes in Britain, although the cause is unknown.

Fox populations are self-regulating, with attempted culls proving unsuccessful. In the 1970s, London boroughs were responsible for their resident foxes. In Bromley, a fox-control officer killed 300 foxes a year, but made no dent in the population. Urban fox control was abandoned in the 1980s."

Bristol I believe was the first to abandon fox 'control' because it realised how expensive and pointless it was. The above information comes from the natural History Museum website post The secret life of urban foxes By Emily Osterloff

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the-secret-life-of-urban-foxes.html?fbclid=IwAR3U0ET-xi8oRgR1Dq_eBDNKLqhqkCI5AA9ojL9Ew3uTWapzNZyN0BLgTyQ

The post links back to a British Trust for Ornithology survey report https://www.bto.org/our-science/projects/bbs/latest-results/mammal-monitoring

Let's look at what was written in the NHM post. Firstly, it mentions Britain's southern urban areas and mentions the 1930s. Research by the British Fox Study (est 1976) hasshown that foxes were sighted in urban and suburban areas well before the 1930s. If we look at Scotland then we know foxes were sighted in cities in the 19th century.

Human activity is followed by waste and waste attracts vermin and vermin are part of the Prey-Predator cycle. You attract the lovely little birds to your garden then the big predatory birds -kestrels and sparrowhawks will notice them. Waste attracting rats will attract THEIR predators -cats and more commonly foxes. Foxes have been found living underthe actual farmyard as well as in barn walls preferring rabbits to the poultry not a few yards from their den.

There being foxes in urban areas and people knowing this are two different things. In the days of no or poor street lights something the size of a cat going over a wall, rushing past or seen turning a corner into anotherroad would be a 'cat'. The first thought would not have been "a fox!" for the simple reason that "you don't get foxes in towns -no chickens" (I know but it was a way of thinking back then). . Dustbins knocked over during the night was put down to a "bloody cat" but would more likely have been a fox or walk-about neighbourhood dog.

If villages were a good source of food a town or city was much better and foxes are great at hiding out and twons and cities offer far more places for foxes to hide safely than hunting areas. I have heard of people not noticing their cats getting any fatter or less hungry yet rat and mice numbers dropped. In one case a local fox was reported as "looking very fit and healthy but no one round here feeds him"...he fed himself no doubt on rats and mice.

Foxes were certainly in southern urban areas before the 1930s but who was studying them -they were"just foxes" and, 'obviously', not in towns.

if the 150, 000 foxes is given and the fall of numbers was 42% that would mean the population was at around 87,000 so 63,000 foxes were gone. We do know (statistics were given in The Red Paper) that badger numbers killed by cars was annually around 55,000 and my estimate was that the number of foxes killed in RTAs was far higher as traffic in towns and cities increased and we saw foxes killed in pairs or even 3s by faster moving traffic. It is all guessology because there is no EXACT figure and no one reports hitting a badger or fox while driving around.

To the above we can add the numbers being killed illegally by snares (there should be no such thing as legal use) for their fur or 'fun' and even some foxes hunted and killed in urban areas.

There are also those who deliberately target foxes (as they do badgers) with poison bait because of a mentally unbalanced hatred of both animals. These people do not live in country areas so cannot claim 'vermin control' -as DEFRA points out foxes have never been officially classed as vermin- and the false claim that foxes kill pet cats is often repeated but since 1976 I have never come across a genuine case so it cannot be claimed foxes are targetted as "pet killers". To date all claimed fox attacks on humans and even children (in the presence of"rather aggressive" pet dogs -which might offer the true culprit) have proven false with those involved being found to support fox hunting after a brief background search -including at least two vets. We know these poisonings take place and in some cases the culprit has been caught by locals after police ineffectiveness and a stop put to the poisoning.

The methods used to poison foxes are well known and have been identified in press reports. Attempts to get the rescues or wildlife centres involved in these cases to cooperate to set up a register of poison cases has met with 100% lack of response. These fox rescues and charities are therefore part of the problem that allows the killings to continue.

We then have 'accidental' poisoning. People buying rat/mouse poison in supermarkets and shops and who sprinkle it on bait for rodents but this is eaten by hedgehogs, cats, foxes, badges and so on. We then have foxes who eat rats now becominbg tolerant to poisons used -the fox dies a slow death from "secondary poisoning" -which also kills a lot of other wildlife and birds of prey. Then slug pellets. In 2021 there is no need for such things because the internet and books are full of advice on slug deterance and when hedgehogs eat slugsthey ingest the poison and I've seen that first hand. Foxes will take snails and slugs and so also digest the poison.

RTA and the other factors would, in fact, make that 42% rather low? The other major reason why these stats cannot be taken seriously are fox feeders. Since 2019 I have monitored online fox groups as well as spoken to long term fox watchers and mange ios treated fairly quickly so there are no massive number of deaths from that. What I have noted is a brace of foxes having 4-7 young or even more (survival rates are low due to discussed factors) and some of these reach adulthood and have young of their own.

Fox feeders tend to be very secretive so would not go onto a survey and state they have a family group of foxes or how many. There are other 30,000 plus members on three particular groups and not all feed foxes but hundreds do -their stats would not be included in the BTO survey. I was once told by a neighbour at a place where I lived that there were no foxes locally but it turned out later that a lady told me she fed the foxes as did the person who told me that there were no foxes! So I asked the said neighbour why he had lied to me? "Well, there are two or three of us locally who look after them but there are a lot of nesty people out there who don't like foxes so we keep quiet".

I have no doubt that foxes are killed in their thousands every year and that deliberate killing should be prosecutable -which means the police actually giving resources for investigation. It strikes me as ludicrous that police forces are given many thousands to tackle countryside crime such as tractor or other vehicle theft and rustling 0taken from persons who themselves are taking part in illegal fox hunts, badger baiting and much more but are never properly investigated and rarely prosecuted.

We have no idea how many foxes there really are because it is impossible to do a head count. We can estimate the number of road deaths but it is all guessology -the number of domestic cats killing "millions" of wildlife species each year is a good example of how bad this guestimation can be because of a number of basic factors.

Yes, many thousands of foxes die each year and if anyhting that should see us looking at greater protection of the species which, because of habits and habitats like any wild species, regulates its own numbers.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/4054520337932989

https://onlinefoxforum.wixsite.com/foxes/about