There is growing anecdotal evidence that the fox population in lowland rural Britain is in sharp decline (Is Britain’s fox population in decline?, Shortcuts, G2, 23 May). This is not because they are short of food, and thus in need of feeding on roadkill by Chris Packham or anybody else.
Professor Stephens of Durham University is right that “fox populations appear to have dropped specifically within the past 15 or 20 years”, ie since the enactment of the ban on fox-hunting in 2004. Nor is he wrong when he suggests that “people who were enthusiastic about hunting would often encourage fox populations”. More accurately, this means that they provided habitat (which benefited all wildlife), observed a closed season to allow foxes to breed and rear their cubs in peace, and practised a method of culling that encouraged survival of the fittest and removed the surplus numbers required to maintain a level population. The existence of hunts also acted as a deterrent to those wishing to shoot foxes indiscriminately and all year round with rifles which have significantly increased in accuracy and range over the past 15 years.
Collectively, these factors resulted in the most stable, healthy fox population in Europe, in perfect balance with other wildlife, and with the needs of land managers. Unfortunately, the Labour party in the House of Commons allowed its prejudice that all hunting people were toffs to blind it to the realities of managing apex predators in a manmade environment.
This can all be sensibly corrected, but it will require Labour to stop playing class war and behave like a responsible party of government when issues around the management of wildlife, such as foxes and badgers, returns to the House of Commons. That is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future.
Benjamin Mancroft
Chairman, Masters of Foxhounds Association
• As a “compassionate conservationist” I found myself often agreeing with Mary Colwell about the realities of predator control (The bloody truth about conservation, 28 May). By the end of the article, however, I had to question how much experience she has had of the realities of the “dialogue” she advocates between landowners and the anti-shooting voices who have no vested financial interests to protect. It is hard to remain positive and avoid finger-pointing when one side continues to indulge in the largely unpunished criminality that has virtually exterminated breeding hen harriers in England and wantonly persecutes golden and sea eagles in Scotland.
I fear she also misunderstands the situation when claiming both sides want the same thing, ie a nature-rich country. The evidence suggests that the natural richness many landowners want is one in which red grouse and pheasant can flourish to the detriment of everything else. Such intransigence makes both sides working together well-nigh impossible.
Professor Andrew Barker
Lothian & Borders Raptor Study Group
• Mary Colwell’s feature on the need for opening up the discussion on predator control is timely. Across the UK, ground-nesting birds such as curlew and lapwing are disappearing from farmland at an alarming rate. Their destruction is directly fuelled by the 1,000% rise in crow numbers since the 1960s, and by foxes; the UK has the second highest number of foxes in Europe – fed by the shooting industry releasing 35m pheasants into the British countryside each year. The current pheasant biomass is unsustainable and destructive, but is being allowed to continue.
By now it is clear that we cannot have both ground-nesting birds and crows and foxes. Open up the debate to honest if uncomfortable dialogue.
Karen Lloyd
Kendal, Cumbria
• Stopping the release of pheasants would do nothing to prevent, or even reduce, fox predation on ground-nesting birds. Depending on whose data you select, the fox population has remained stable since the 1990s or declined by up to 40%. There is no evidence of a continuing or recent rise in fox numbers.
In any case, preventing the local extinction of increasingly rare species such as the curlew, lapwing or grey partridge does not depend on reducing the national fox population, such an idea is plainly untenable. When a householder or council sets out to deal with a rat infestation, their success is not based on reducing the UK’s rat population but on killing the particular problem animals in a particular place.
In the same way preventing the local extinction of rare ground-nesting birds may depend on stopping a particular fox killing a sitting curlew, it most certainly does not rely on reducing the guesstimated number of foxes in the UK to a smaller guesstimate.
What is usually needed is carefully targeted, efficient and humane action, taken at the right time in the right place.
That such an idea is controversial continues to surprise many reasonable and informed people and, as Mary Colwell suggests, has much to do with the larger conservation businesses not wanting to compromise their fundraising potential by being too frank.
Ian Coghill
Chairman, Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust
• Due to predator control being included in the conservation management mix of our national nature reserve on the Kent marshes, this reserve now holds the largest concentration of breeding waders in lowland UK. The harsh reality is that conservationists have either to accept the need for effective predator control or to accept the continued tragic decline of curlew, lapwing and other ground nesting birds.
Philip Merricks
Elmley National Nature Reserve, Sheerness, Sheppey, Kent
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