I have just written something similar to this post over on the Bristol Badger Group blog. My first statement is a fact: the UK is very far from a "nation of animal lovers". We lose THOUSANDS of animals on our roads every year mainly wildlife but also domestic.
Based on my own records out of 100 foxes reported dead how many involved the driver stopping and checking that the animal was dead or injured and then reporting it? Zero. There was one instance when the people "in the car behind" reported an incident and that is it. For a year with the final total of over 300 foxes killed that is bad.
We know, from various estimates, that roughly 60% (at least) of the UK fox population has been lost. There have even been calls to have the red fox placed on The Red List marking it as endangered. No one interested.
Every night in the UK men and woman don their cammo gear and go out 'sport' shooting. Many foxes die and in some cases the, uh, 'sportsmen' note moving into new area as "foxes a bit scarce". Domestic cats and other animals are also shot because "determined to shoot something". Foxes can be "dealt with" officially if they threaten livestock but when the nearest livestock is 10 or 20 miles away surely that makes decimating the fox population by shooting them illegal? Well, a couple groups have given a nod and a wink that they are okay as they have "boys in blue" (police officers) on their team.
Officially the only people who refer to foxes as vermin are anti-fox/pro hunt people. They have never been classified as vermin officially and that term comes from the hunts who used it to replace "Beasts of the chase" (probably due to there being too many words to remember).
I was asked what sort of funding I get since the British Fox Study started in 1976 and has revealed so much about the lost history of the true Old British foxes as well as looking at fox welfare and health and educating people on the animal. Not a single penny. Everything has come out of my own pocket because in the UK they are "just foxes" -unless you work at a university and find there is grant money looking at foxes (parasites, disease etc.
I fought long and hard to get fox post mortems carried out and that study revealed a great deal that we were not expecting. My final draft report was handed in and well, the story is told on this blog. My publishing business was attacked, I was threatened with having a barrister put on me to take extreme action and these moves were officially supported by the bodies involved. WHY let the PM study go ahead only to suppress the findings?
EU funding? Tried but you have to get a tick in all the required boxes first. Donations to the work...well, the petty cash box has never seen a penny!
Even discovering taxidermy samples of Old foxes has gained no interest -DNA labs approached have had no interest despite the possible implications of defining a new extinct species or unique sub-species.
When I shuffle off this mortal coil my books will also vanish as they are on an online store that closes when I do! My archives... who knows. The books should have sold well enough to continue to finance the work but fact and non dogma material seems out of fashion -who reads books these days?
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