It’s easy to find lots of views and images of Red Foxes on the internet: some people love them and others loathe them. But I’m surprised that there isn’t more discussion about their status.
I posted this graph (from the recent excellent BBS report) a while ago wondering whether this population trend was real or not. Nobody suggested there was anything wrong with it.
So, if this trend is real then in 24 years the Red Fox has declined by 50% in numbers – halved! If this were a bird, and it clearly isn’t, it would be on the UK red list.
On the basis that I can’t find anyone jumping up and down about Red Fox numbers declining dramatically then maybe they aren’t declining at all. But then, what value is the BBS graph above in that case? I often hear that Red Foxes are incredibly common and increasing – but are they? How do we know that? Most of the Red Foxes I see are in London – I rarely see them in the countryside around where I live.
So I’m puzzled. Are they exploding in numbers or decreasing dramatically? And how would we know?
Let’s just think of reasons why Red Foxes might be declining in numbers. Here’s a list off the top of my head:
- increased road kill
- intensification of agriculture leading to loss of food
- Rabbit decline
- competition with Badgers
- Red Foxes benefitted from being chased around the countryside by fox hunts and are missing them
- some sort of disease
- some sort of environmental pollution
You could add to the list, I’m sure. But there is a list of reasons they might be increasing too – this won’t get us very far.
But let’s look at this graph;
This is from the GWCT Gamebag Census so these are records of dead Red Foxes not live ones (although they were alive until they were shot). Also they are for an overlapping but not identical period: the dead-fox data start and end earlier than the live-fox data. And note, the graph has not been updated since 2010 – that’s quite a long time ago.
There are two ways of looking at this, if you shoot more Red Foxes year on year it shows that there are more of them about so this is a graph of population increase in complete contrast with the BBS population trend. Or, the increased killing pressure is a factor, or maybe even the factor, in the decline of Red Foxes (if they really are declining).
I’m not sure what to think – can anyone help me out, please.
[registration_form]
Ask Tim Hartford on BBCR4 More or Less. He had a go at the pheasant releases recently!
I think to make sense of this we need to consider urban foxes separately from rural.
Urban foxes live at much higher densities, I’m sure I read live shorter lives on average, (no ref, sorry) and populations tend to cycle as mange etc causes a periodic mortality spike once they hit a critical density, then the whole thing starts again. Cycles in different towns and cites aren’t in sync though so I would guess that the overall urban population is probably stable if not still rising- certainly not of conservation concern.
Rural foxes – indeed, who knows? My experience is that populations vary county to county much more than year to year, but I doubt there is any accurate data set. It’ll be like rabbits, which are supposedly extremely rare according to the records because they are in fact so common that no-one bothers to record them. Just like we used to say about house sparrows and starlings…
The reason for the decline of rural foxes where I live is counter intuitive but simple. It is the foxhunting ban. Hunting actually gave the farmers a reason for maintaining a fox population so they had something to hunt and was a community activity as much as anything with traditions going back centuries. Now it is banned foxes are simply shot usually by lamping and with a view to extermination. I used to see lots of foxes but now there is very little evidence of them.
I am not a hunt supporter but I think the ban has been counter productive and has led to the loss of an important predator which would have controlled the rabbits attacking my vegetables.
I do live in the lakes where hunting was all on foot and difficult so it failed to attract the horse riding class so the situation may be different elsewhere. Here if shooting is banned it will still go on unless the farmers are onside.
Agree with the need to separate rural and urban – how does the BBS sample split in this regard? We pick up foxes on our trail cameras, see them occasionally – including young, smell their presence and find scats. They are pretty secretive around this rural area dominated by arable and a long-held dislike by many, so not surprising they tend to keep a low profile. Do the BBS data permit further investigation of trends in different broad habitats and geographical regions?
Rowena – many thanks. There would clearly be that possibility in the dataset.
But we don’t do that with widespread common birds before deciding that the voverall decline is a bit worrying…
WE don’t see foxes very often here in Wales, I’ve seen two or the same fox twice since Christmas. Once being pursued by the local (Llandinam) hunt in certainly an illegal manner ( full pack, followers on foot and horses, no attempt to call them off) A week later our dog flushed a fox probably the same at about 10 feet. Yet foxes have had cubs very close to us the last two years but are very secretive, not a bad thing with hunt, sheep farmers and keepers all against them.
That’s the thing in most of the countryside they are secretive by habit because of learnt behaviour avoiding us. On big nature reserves and in the urban environment they are more easily seen because I suspect they are not so secretive because they don’t need to be.
Its not just foxes, badgers are very secretive here away from one nature reserve and the otters entirely nocturnal. Yet in Newtown only a dozen miles away you can see otter in the middle of the town in the middle of most days. So it may not be as clear cut as the BBS figures suggest.
When I lived in Glasgow, I used to see Foxes regularly. You’d see them even in the city centre as far in as Candleriggs, and up the old high street, but since I moved back to the country I have seen zero foxes. I have seen a lot of people out with shotguns though.
Wow, otters!
I lived near Newtown in the 70s – 80s, at one time right by the bank of the Severn – would have loved to see an otter.
As for foxes, no, very occasionally – but the Llandinam hunt, yes, sightings of them. Maybe there’s some connection.
I have no proof, however urban fox numbers do seem to echo the availability of cast off food by us. When refuse collectors were deemed unable to lift multiple use metal dustbins any more and we all started using single use black plastic bags, the numbers of urban foxes I was observing grew dramatically. When we moved to wheelie bins, the urban fox population seemed to stabilise. Consequently, with more councils recycling food waste, the access of free hand outs to foxes is diminishing. 2020 has seen much less social activity and therefore less disposal of part-eaten take aways on the way home from an evening of entertainment or restaurant rubbish piled in bags. The two fox cubs I have seen this spring from the den on my neighbours’ property have been both thin and full of mange.
I think there will be a lot of complexity and differing figures all over the country. I can think of places where the populations go from a few, to loads, to extremely rare again all within six or seven miles. Also, places you expect to see them, you sometimes don’t and then you see them in places they never used to be. I think they are extremely adaptable to changes in land management, and seem to sense when they are better off vacating an area for a better one nearby. The number of variable factors are huge, not least of all persecution and rat & rabbit population. I personally don’t think that hunting with hounds had / has a big effect. There is also the urban-country foxes I have seen…eating from mcdonalds drive-thru wrappers thrown into the hedges at a 5 mile (10 minute eating time!) radius to the town.
“Red Foxes benefitted from being chased around the countryside by fox hunts…” As a species, they did indeed and, in some areas, no doubt still do. Historically there was always tension between the gamekeeper and the local hunt. Hunts need foxes to hunt, and sympathetic landowners made sure there was a healthy population. Pheasant and partridge shoots don’t need foxes…
Yep that is true. Landowners with a love of hunting always restrain the keepers usual over zealous ways of wiping them out. Certainly some hunts did / still do have artificial earths and keep chucking a bit of carrion / offal around the woods to encourage them. And as has been covered elsewhere (but I would say it is true), some hunts used to / still do acquire cage trapped live cubs & young foxes to restock their area. So I agree with you, the fox population does benefit from hunts, which are rarely about “fox control”, but only by virtue of dying a horrendous death in smaller numbers at regular meets rather than constantly until (local) extinction, at the keepers bloody hands. Two equally grim alternatives.
Why not ask Chris Packham? He’s very knowledgeable about foxes so I understand.
I can only speak from personal experience but I’ve never seen a fox in a rural area but seen them several times in suburban area where I live.
You will never get any true figures while urban fox’s are being caught, treated (neutered, operation scars, treated for mange, bits and eyes missing) and dumped in the countryside. Many are soon shot when a problem,(no fear and no hunting instinct) run over, starve or killed by other fox’s, dogs etc. Several dumped at a time. Often on or near shoots, fishing lakes, caravan,camping sites and even reserves. Easy food! Been going on for years and no one will admit to doing it or who is getting them to do it. Late summer (dispersal) a peak time. Often a peak in mange in local population shortly after and sometimes local domestic dogs to. RSPCA say it’s not them?? Was even a large reward offered but no joy. Who ever is doing it has no idea about rural fox’s the countryside or how there actions for whatever reasons can really upset the balance in local wildlife. Just making them someone else’s problem. Suddenly there will be 6 fox’s where there was none. It has been going on for years. It’s cruel, illegal and about time it stopped! The RSPB, Wildlife trusts etc must know this goes on and have problem with it themselves? Look how tame some fox’s are on reserves, the numbers they control and how many they kill. 40 plus on just one reserve last year i was told. There must all have figures of if and how many they have killed? Numbers of dens and amount of fox predation? Be good to see those stats to.
Same with badgers! Why will none of the wildlife orgs admit they eat and are a big part in the big decline of hedgehogs!? Also bees and ground nesting birds? The public are not stupid! Give them the facts. I show and tell them when ever i can. There is plenty of info and evidence out there on trail cams. Evidence of both can be found weekly sometimes daily this time of year in countryside and gardens. And no it’s not “because they are staving because it’s been so dry and they can’t get worms”. It’s because they just bloody love eating hedgehogs. So much so the tell tail remains ( skins turned inside out) have become known by rural/shooting folk as hedgehog slippers. Never used to find them like that years ago. There was a great piece of trail cam evidence on social media other week showing badger shifting bricks and a slab with ease to get to a hedgehog. It’s a shame the poster hadn’t the balls to show the end result. Probably been censored /taken down anyway.
Awa’ an’ pish !
Steve, it sounds as though you have something of a misunderstanding about the nature of predator / prey relationships. As has been covered many time before on this blog, the numbers of predators are dependent upon the availability of prey species, not vice versa as you seem to imply. Coincidentally, the latest post on here (https://markavery.info/2020/06/25/guest-blog-i-wish-i-had-swatted-it-by-jonathan-wallace/) covers exactly this topic.
However, urban foxes ( like domestic cats) are, on the whole, not tied to any fluctuations in
natural prey populations.
Likewise, a burgeoning badger population, possibly due to agricultural changes, can impact
on hedgehogs, declining from related causes.
“the numbers of predators are dependent upon the availability of prey species” – I doubt it’s as simple as that. For one thing many prey are also predators and vice versa.
“Give them the facts”
Part of a comment that consists purely of hearsay, speculation and half-truths.
I can’t help feeling [wrong post Brian]
The Hunting act followed shortly afterwards by the wide spread availability and use of night vision, then thermal imaging, to aid night shooting. The fox cannot evolve to avoid being seen with thermal imaging.
What would be the ‘correct’ number of foxes if their natural predators and competitors (bears, wolves, lynx) were still around?
Is there any relationship between the number of foxes and the number of badgers?
I can’t say I’ve noticed any decline in numbers, but that might be because I live in an area with lots of commercial forestry.d
de – Badgers and Red Foxes compete for underground lairs and generally give each other a hard time. Badgers would usually win fights with Red Foxes.
Yes, some of that effort spent on killing Red Foxes is because of all that effort that went into killing larger predators a long time ago. Of course, as Red Foxes decline then Stoats and Weasels (and Carrion Crows) might benefit, so some will feel they have to kill more of them, and then when they are reduced in number…
National Parks would be good palces to reset the ecological clock on predators, don’t you think?
I beleive there is data from the badger culls showing both foxes and hedgehog numbers increase when badgers decrease.
If by ‘reset the ecological clock’ you mean reintroduction of lost species then yes I agree. If you mean establish a new baseline then I disagree.
de – then we agree on that.
There is no doubt that in some areas high Badger density is a problem for Hedgehogs. Here we have both Foxes and Badgers, although I suspect a much higher density of Badgers judging from the sign about.
Interestingly when Wolves were put back in Yellowstone, the densities of Coyote, Fox and Black Bear went down quite a lot, American Badger is a very different animal from our badger so comparisons are probably not helpful.
I guess the problem with the data is that the BBS information might be skewed towards rural squares? I haven’t delved into whether the optional mammal recording is evenly spread across all of the representative habitats or not.. do the BTO say? I recall from when I worked on State of Nature 2016 it was very apparent that there was minimal reliable monitoring/surveillance data for mammals, and that the BBS was the most scientifically robust despite its lmitations.
So it could well be that urban Foxes or suburban foxes are faring better than rural ones. maybe someone should start a UK Mammal monitoring programme?
Louise – they shouldn’t be skewed as they are randomly selected squares but you are right that the option to record mammals may be picked up differently in different situations. I’d guess, that since saying that you recorded no mammals is (from memory) just ticking the ‘I recorded mammals’ box and then putting in no data I wouldn’t have thought that many would be put off by it.
This BBS survey is based upon light sampling, sometimes a couple or not many more per county. As a constant sample there is some advantage but it would be interesting to know how observers look for signs or just report sightings. Would be worth checking. The regional trends are different and several urban studies over the period tell another story, some with new colonisation to high levels. It’s is all that there is and not much but foxes still seem to be everywhere at highly variable local densities and impossible to control for long by shooting. However the game bag reflects perhaps more an increase in fox shooting and or efficiency with, as someone has mentioned night shooting of mammals becoming much easier with thermal imaging. However shooting foxes just perturbates them and you can shoot a lot but the effects are short lived. Hence the old saying ‘shoot a fox and three’ come to its funeral. Natural England have a blood sports officer who has lots of opinions and experience with this but tends to be secret or made up to suit. NE thinks shooters can tell if fox numbers are increasing and will naturally shoot more if this ever happens but have no evidence of this. This was a large focal point in recent legal action (CO 5921 2017-2019) that saw long debate on this point and Natural England turning cartwheels to try to keep out of jail. Also caving in with multiple concessions where assessment of potential damage to SSSI’s required checking. NE promised the judge, who said NE had been in breach of duty that they would monitor all vulnerable SSSI’s and linked land where fox numbers might change as a result of badger culling (as shown by the RBCT eco-studies) but recently said they struggle to cope on 50% of SSSIs. The studies they promised to do (potential impacts on birds) was reduced to only one wider check and NE paid BTO to do it. The finished report was then (2017) withheld on the excuse that aspects were in the process of being published but nothing happened in 2018 or 2019. Now they have been declared obsolete despite being used in 2018 and 2019 and that the report paid for by public money is still top secret. BTO has someone on the NE Board. Now NE says they are doing a new report that says something else that we might be able to see at Christmas. This might reflect just a little poorly on NE and BTO reputations. Three years of secrecy – just to hide the fact that NE doesn’t have the information to back up what it says in court about foxes and birds.
Tom – thanks. I’m not sure what you mean by the BBS at the beginning of your comment though.
BTO Breeding Bird Survey – mammals recorded as a part of this.
Tom – yes, and I’m one f those recorders which is why I was puzzled by your comment. First, I think I now realise that ‘light sampling’ meant not much sampling rather than sampling with shiny things (not your fault – but I read it the other way at first). But your remark on ‘sometimes a couple per county’ isn’t quite right, I think. The table in the latest BBS report (Table 12, p29) shows the sample size for Red Fox rto be 283. That could be about 2 per county depending on what definition of county one used. But that isn’t the real sample size, I think. the sample size for Rabbit was 1458 and if you are recording mammals on BBS you are (at least in intention) eithr recording all of them or none of them. And the 1458 will represent the number of squares on which Rabbits were recorded – presumably many urban squares (and in some years my rural squares) don’t result in rabbit (or Red Fox) observations. So, as a guess, I reckon there might wel;l be 2000 squares where BBS recorders would note red Foxes if they saw one (or more). That’s not a tiny sample size and it should be fairly rpreentative given that the squares are randomly selected. Now, wandering around listening and looking for birds early in the morning may not be the best technique for spotting red Foxes but it isn’t bad. And importantly 24 years ago or so, people were seeing twice as many Red Foxes by this method than they are now.And the regional trends for Red Fox in England (see tables on same page of report) at least as far as they go, seem to tell a conseistent tale of moderate to fairly severe decline.
All I’m saying is that the data are not to be sniffed at. I’m still confused.
Oh right, to be more precise, having checked, the survey was reporting foxes (e.g. in 2000) in around say average five places per county. Sample size has increased hugely as more birdwatchers join to strengthen the BBS. Might be interesting to look at the data such as the ratio of live fox sightings to the other forms of recording and to see if that has varied over time/with sample size.
Shooting foxes only has a temporary effect on numbers just like weeding a garden only has a temporary effect on weeds. That doesn’t mean you can’t get a fairly weed free garden but you have to keep on doing it otherwise they just come back.
Extent of BBS Coverage not quite clear – may have improved recently as more join
Tom – there’s a map in the 2019 report. The coverage is very good, particularly in England. You could have a perfectly good bird survey with many fewer data points.
But I’m still not sure how good it is for mammals in general and Red Foxes in particular. Nobody has suggested there is a better measure out there yet, I notice.
Hi Mark. The BBS is a wonderful thing, but I would take any trends it indicates on non-avian taxa with a very large pinch of salt. Asking BBS participants to record sightings of white admiral butterflies or field signs of hedgehogs might deliver some interesting records, but it would be foolish to try and extrapolate national trends from such data for reasons which should be obvious. The value of the BBS is in revealing large scale and long term trends In national populations of breeding birds. It is at best a leap of faith to do anything else with such a coarse grained dataset. That didn’t of course stop NE doing so in the case Tom mentions, however. I have no doubt that had the BTO trend graph shown increasing fox numbers in regions where badgers are being culled. they would have been equally quick to point out the flaws in extrapolation of ancillary/secondary data from a citizen science project (as good a one that it is). At the end of the day if we want to get an accurate handle on the fox population, people need to go out looking for foxes, not birds.
Dominic – it is indeed a wonderful thing.
Not such a leap of faith – after all, we accept (don’t we?) that it can survey birds as disparate as Treecreeper, Lapwing and Nightingale.
It’s not foolish to extrapolate national trends from a well-designed survey of representative areas of the country – randomly selected. So it isn’t a coarse-grained dataset, it’s a well designed dataset. If anything, it would be a well-designed and reliable survey with far fewer sites surveyed – that’s how good it is.
I’m asking why I shouldn’t believe that Red Foxes have declined lots (50% it seems) over a 25 year period when the trend is pretty smooth throughout that period and the confidence intervals are narrow. Added to which it is based on whether people see Red Foxes on a walk in each year – that’s all. If, as seems to be the case thousands of surveyors (who would presumable recognise a Red Fox if they saw one (would they tell a Blackcap song from a Garden Warbler song with the same aptitude?)) are seeing half as many Red Foxes now as 25 years ago, why shouldn’t I believe that.
I’m still puzzled. But I notice nobody saying the gamebag figures are the real deal. they can’t both be right (well, they could be, but not as estimates of population trend).
Hi Mark. You say “I notice nobody saying the gamebag figures are the real deal. they can’t both be right (well, they could be, but not as estimates of population trend).”
That’s kind of my point. Many of the arguments you adopt for saying the BBS fox data should be reliable could also be applied to gamebag totals. Is the one dataset really any less susceptible to bias than the other? If the two deliver a confusing picture, it suggests there is a flaw with one or both, as you have said. That’s kind of the point of my flippant ‘look for foxes’ remark; we’re trying to lift robust conclusions out of data from studies not designed to provide those conclusions. Of course in the absence of resources to conduct a nationwide study of foxes, then extrapolating from other datasets might be the next best thing, but we should not be surprised if and when this delivers a confusing picture. And we should be wary of anyone trying to claim a definitive answer from such an exercise. At best it points to a need to look closer if we want to answer the question. i.e. look for foxes.
Separately, and on a purely personal level, my subjective experience is that foxes are (overall) not noticeably more common or scarce than they have ever been (and I do see a lot of the country). If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say they are doing OK, and that there are rather more of them in some places than there used to be, and rather less in others. Massively unhelpful to your question, I know!
Dominic
I don’t say that the BBS Red Fox data are reliable – but I haven’t heard an argument why they are not reliable.
Is there a reason why the BBS data should be less biased than the gamebag data? Yes there is, the BBS data are from randomly chosen 1km squares and are collected by thosands of volunteers. The gamebag data aren’t.
But the gamebag data may be better than the BBS ones for showing Red Fox population trends – except still nobody has claimed that they are.
The two ‘schemes’ although it is a bit flattering to call the gamebag data a scheme, give apparently different views of population trajectory although they could both be right if the level of killing is high and increasing and is causing a decline in the overall population level. It’s a pity that the gamebag data don’t include the most recent years. What would they show?
I just wonder why nobody, except me it seems, is looking at the Red Fox data from BBS and saying ‘50% decline in 25 years – blimey!’. Is it because no-one believes the data (in which case why am I being asked to collect it?), is it because nobody cares about Red Foxes? (I’m told lots of people do), or what?
I’m still puzzled.
My money would be on Red Foxes being in decline – because there seems no good reason to think that the BBS data are wholly wrong. But I’m still open to arguments.
Could game bag numbers appear to show an increase in fox numbers because a lot of game control tends to happen near to shoots, and the expansion of these (in terms of both number and gamebird biomass) in recent decades is effectively ‘sucking’ foxes out of the surrounding countryside? It is possible to concieve that this might show increased bags even in the face of overall national decline. Perhaps the draw of the urban environment does the same thing – not many BBS transects cut through urban areas, even if the sample square includes them. This could mean the BBS data are right, or it could simply be the case that (being smoothed across geographical coverage), it is not picking up that modern fox populations have, due to the above distributional influences, become more ‘patchy’, with big variations between hotspots and coldspots. It is not necessarily the case that the randomised square approach corrects for that. Pure conjecture of course.
Foxes are, by and large, nocturnal. There won’t be many wandering about when people are doing their BBS. And i doubt many people would have the time or inclination to go looking for them when doing a bird survey.
I’ve never seen a fox when doing my BBS, but the farmer assures me they’re there, and I’ve no reason to doubt him.
de – Barn Owls, Tawny Owls and Little Owls are all, by and large (or partly) nocturnal. They are covered by BBS. they also have population levels between one and two orders of magnitude lower than that of the Red Fox (apparently).
Nobody has told me why I should set aside the very consistent downward trend of the Red Fox population over 24 years with its narrow confidence intervals and believe that it hasn’t happened.
And I notice that nobody has said that the Red Fox bags are what really indicate the trend best.
I’m still quite puzzled as to quite why two long term surveys give diametrically opposed answers to the question are they going up or down?
Some interesting Comments and good information.
How do those two lots of figures compare to fox numbers on reserves Mark? As i said surely the RSPB etc must have some good “facts”? Years of records of numbers, monitoring, numbers of dens, cubs, amount of predation, the affect of rising badger population on them and numbers of foxes they control/kill each year? Do they ever tag any? Do they notice unusual spikes and signs of possible urban dumping. Some think it may be city/town councils using (band wagon) urban controllers with a few traps who have no means of legal dispatch. One paper reported 3k per fox for “live removal” in London a few years back.
Same goes for monitoring /recording badgers on reserves. Numbers of sets, young, affect on hedgehog numbers, amount of predation on bee and wasp nests etc? We have seen The devastating effect they have on ground nesting birds on Springwatch at Minsmere. And seem to continue to do so even after the hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on electric predator fence making it Stalag Minsmere. Know the reserve well as man and boy. Only place i have sat and watched red deer on the beach. Before the zapp fence and the cull that is. Special but not what it once was. Has the fence reduced numbers of both and predation of some of the rare birds we are all trying to help? . . . Foxes and badgers and all the other predators on reserves that have plenty of staff must be monitored like all wildlife more closely and pests target controlled better then i can or any keepered ground. Even though we know our foxes, badgers, dens and setts etc.
Do RSPB etc use trail cams, NV and thermal to monitor them? The Springwatch footage of badger predation the other year was a shock to many. As it is to folk when i show and tell them how they eat hedgehogs and dig out bee and wasp nests. Also a hungry badger has no respect for ordinary electric fences as i am sure any beach bird colony monitor will know! Do such figures and facts get published? If so do you have a link? As i couldn’t find any when i looked for fox, badger, predators, predation and pest control stats a while ago when looking up turtle dove numbers for comparison to my area. Not looking good for them going by stats. But that’s where grey squirrel and corvid predation comes in! Of which dear old Minsmere has to many of both.
steve – well, you might want to ask the RSPB, but if you had those answers it wouldn’t tell you anything much about whether the BBS-measured Red Fox decline is more or less right.
The truth about that fence…
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/record-breaking-year-for-the-avocet-thanks-to-efforts-at-rspb-minsmere-1-4266197