The U.K. Hunting Ban Is Not Helping Foxes

Say what you want about Professor Stephen Harris of Bristol University, author of The Mammal Society's little 24-page monograph on the Red Fox (1994), but the man is at least brave enough to look at the data and state the obvious, which is that the ban on fox hunting with dogs in the U.K. has been a shambles and has not improved the lifespan of fox one iota.

And why has it not worked? Simple: Because, as Rudyard Kipling observed, the true "blood sport" of England is not chasing fox, but driving too fast on the narrow roads. The thing that kills the most fox in the UK is the automobile, followed by disease and starvation.

And why should this be a surprise? The same was true before the "ban" on hunting fox. Fox are at biological capacity in the U.K.

What this means is pretty simple: fox are going to die from something, one way or another. They can die from starvation (often as cubs in the den), or mange, or distemper, or from vehicle impacts. What is not an option is for vixens to have five kits a year forever, and all of them live to ripe old ages.

It has never happened, it cannot happen due to the laws of physics and demographics, and it will never happen.

As premier fox biologist David MacDonald has noted in the past, mounted fox hunting and fox hunting with dogs has never made a tinker's damn worth of difference to fox numbers across a wide area anywhere in the world.

In fact, argues MacDonald, no one has been more beneficial to the fox than the mounted hunts which work to protect habitat across the United Kingdom. The mounted hunts, in fact, were the reason poison and leghold traps (gins) were banned in the U.K. -- to keep fox numbers up for the mounted hunts and dog men. Even before the so-called "ban" on hunting with dogs went into effect, fox were at maximum biological capacity in the U.K.

EARTHtimes, Fri, 02 Nov 2007

Hunting Ban Not Helping Foxes in Britain

LONDON, Nov. 2 A controversial hunting ban in Britain apparently has failed to accomplish its purpose of extending the lifespan of foxes.

The country's leading expert on the animals, Professor Stephen Harris of Bristol University, said motorists remain the No. 1 killers of foxes in Britain with some 100,000 dying under the wheels of cars and trucks each year, The Independent reported Friday.

Harris said his studies show that more than 75 percent of foxes are dead by their second year of life with 1.5 percent living as long as six years."

Only one in every thousand makes it to a decade," Harris told The Independent.

Supporters of the fox hunting ban now entering its third year had hoped it would extend the lifespan of the average fox."

A fox is lucky to get passed its first birthday and even luckier to pass its second," wildlife expert John Bryant told The Independent. "It is a combination of factors, chiefly motor vehicles. They are also being shot by farmers, caught in snares and still hunted, despite the ban."