NOTICE: The Fox Forum and British Canid Historical Society

 

 Although I announce such a year or so ago I need to make it absolutely clear that I have no connection with or work with the British Canid Historical Society nor the Fox Forum.  These were supposed to continue the work I started in 1976 but I was quickly blocked from one and the other contained incorrect information that was never corrected -I had no access to any form of control on either.

It is a very sad and complicated story but I wanted to make sure people understood that I was no longer involved.

Rediscovering Fox and Wild Cat History -WHY Are The "Experts" So Afraid?

 

I started my fox/wild canid work back in 1976 and that involved field work, observation in situ as well as a great deal (a lot!) of archival research .  Before the internet going to public libraries was the only way of finding fox related items; thousands of tightly packed and incredible small print columns.  

The main sources for information were books and those mainly pre-1900 since after that period dogma set in  and dogma repeated ad nauseum becomes 'fact'. 

Even back in the 1870s seasoned naturalists who were also, to their eternal damnation, hunters that helped wipe out species, would tour museums and explain why what those museums were displaying were not wild cats but hybrids -particularly the wild tabby. We are talking about people such as John Colquhoun and Frank Buckland who were seen as the most experienced and knowledgeable experts in the field. They had studied, hunted and killed and had wild cats stuffed and mounted and displayed in their collections. As noted in The Red Paper 2022 (Felids) at a meeting of Scottish naturalists in the 1890s a man who had studied wild cats in Scotland for 40 years presented a paper which backed up the declaration that the true Scottish wild cat had become extinct in the 1860s.

The problem was that sentimentality about "puss" our beloved pets as well as the popularisation of Scotland thanks to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert meant "everything Scottish" was grabbed at.  The tabby style wild cat you see in museums is a hybrid and nothing like the large cat that was once called "The English Tiger"/"The Highland Tiger" and which was hunted with dogs wearing metal studded or thick leather collars as the wild cat could kill them -and severely injure a human hunter. Museums wanted what the British Museum declared to be THE atypical wild cat. The tabby. Up until 1900 true wild cats were not to be found in museum displays as there was no interest.

As a young naturalist I was fooled into believing the wild tabby was the only wild cat type to have existed in the UK. Decades of research taught me a lesson.

The same applies with foxes. As a young naturalist I knew that "The Little Red Dog"; the Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) was the only fox type to ever exist in the UK. I used to chuckle about the silly stories of extremely large foxes.  All the experts whose books I read ridiculed the idea of a "mountain fox" as none of them had ever seen one so...it did not exist.  All this meant that actually finding book after book, article after article and newspaper reports of Mountain foxes was a slap in the face that woke me up.   

All of the "experts" I had looked up to had not carried out even the most simple research and worse -they were cribbing from one another so that they presented false information as fact. I then managed to find photographs, often very old of wild cats that were not the wild tabby and that led to my discovering illustrations and descriptions of Old fox types -eventually taxidermy proved that those descriptions and illustrations were correct and not exaggerations. What is more there were three types of fox each literally bred for the environment they inhabited. The small Cur fox that lived near human habitation. The Hill or mastiff fox that lived in rough and hilly terrain. Then there was the largest (photo examples in The Red Paper) the Mountain or Greyhound fox -not "reds" and lacking black markings like the red fox has.

It took years to understand the various local names given these foxes and longer before the taxidermies became available. Every reference I found has been included in my work so that it can all be peer reviewed. Even the evidence of a similar fox in Western Europe has been referenced -only one European museum has bothered to cooperate(and find an 1848 British fox in its collection). The, uh, 'expert' of 30 years on red foxes who had the museums collection of taxidermy in a room behind him but refused to even get up and check sums up the situation.

Money and ego.  Publishers have paid authors -"experts"- to write books on foxes and as it was all repeated dogma who gets the biggest red face from embarrassment? The ego is a problem. Yes, they have specialised in red foxes so they know about red foxes. No problem except that they have done no real historical research so the myth of Western Europe, the UK and Ireland having only ever had red foxes is perpetuated and rather than cooperating on the research to present the true history of foxes (or wild cats) the 'experts' hide in their offices unwilling to do anything. That is not how science is supposed to work.

The extinct Hong Kong fox could not be identified by Chinese/Hong Kong museums and it took me years to finally identify the species conclusively (just search blog posts). My colleague, LM, has two foxes that should be of historical importance to French natural history as they may well be the first foxes imported from Canada (and they are NOT red foxes) or they are examples of the extinct Western European fox -we know the name, date and even location of where these ancient foxes were displayed. The Natural History Museum (Paris) had absolutely no interest and even became obstructive in searching their archives.

Scandinavian naturalists doubt that there was an Old type fox in Norway. Yet, we have accounts in newspapers and books of these foxes being imported by hunts to England and descriptions of them -it is possible that, to fulfill hunting binges, the English hunts imported so many of these Norwegian foxes that it led to their extinction there.

All of this fully referenced and details presented and yet some "experts" even refused copies of my book to check it all out.   I had to self publish as despite book company editors praising the manuscripts there was a sudden change in attitude.  UK publishers have a lot of hunt supporters and hunters on their boards.

1976-2024 is a long time researching foxes/wild canids and I have learnt that dogma is always supported.

The Need For Historical Context In DNA testing of Foxes

 

I think that this quote from Science Open is very relevent when it comes to the paper I am about to comment on https://blog.scienceopen.com/2016/05/why-context-is-important-for-research/#:~:text=It%20comes%20from%20the%20Latin,the%20context%20of%20existing%20research.

"Context can defined as: “The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood.” Simple follow on questions might be then, what is the context of a research article? How do we define that context? How do we build on that to do science more efficiently? The whole point for the existence of research articles is that they can be understood by as broad an audience as possible so that their re-use is maximised.

"There are many things that impinge upon the context of research. Paywalls, secretive and exclusive peer review, lack of discovery, lack of inter-operability, lack of accessibility. The list is practically endless, and a general by-product of a failure for traditional scholarly publishing models to embrace a Web-based era."

The paper I am going to look at, or, rather comment on is

Population genetic structure of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) in the UK

• Original Paper
• Open access
• Published: 19 December 2014

• pages 9–19, (2015)

Quoting from the abstract:

"The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is common and widely distributed within the UK. It is a carrier or potential carrier of numerous zoonotic diseases. Despite this, there are no published reports on the population genetics of foxes in Britain. 

"In this study, we aim to provide an insight into recent historical movement of foxes within Britain, as well as a current assessment of the genetic diversity and gene flow within British populations. We used 14 microsatellite markers to analyse 501 red fox samples originating from England, southern Scotland and northern France. High genetic diversity was evident within the sample set as a whole and limited population genetic structure was present in British samples analysed. 

"Notably, STRUCTURE analysis found support of four population clusters, one of which grouped two southern England sampling areas with the nearby French samples from Calais, indicating recent (post-formation of the Channel) mixing of British and French populations.

 "This may coincide with reports of large-scale translocations of foxes into Britain during the nineteenth century for sport hunting. Other STRUCTURE populations may be related to geographic features or to cultural practices such as fox hunting. In addition, the two British urban populations analysed showed some degree of differentiation from their local rural counterparts."

This 2014 paper originated from people employed by DEFRA (Department for Environment Farming and Rural Affairs).  There is a note at one point of some people considering foxes to be "pests" which felt so out of place and left me wondering what the report's intention was.  A rather neutral and less biased way of putting it would have been: "Foxes are not and have never been officially classed as vermin in the UK". Simple fact and leave peoples' personal opinions to themselves.

Why do I mention context regarding this?  Because interesting DNA showing cross-breeding but there is no real context to explain the results. I know these people were doing DNA work (always welcome on wildlife) and what they knew of Vulpes vulpes appears to be very -VERY- basic and likely from online sources.

"indicating recent (post-formation of the Channel) mixing of British and French populations" is interesting but how? Why? How long after the formation of the Channel? Here is a basic answer.

As wolves, lynx, bears and other large mammals were still being hunted but heading to the precipice of extinction there was not enough to kill for 'sport'. Otters, beavers -literally anything on the land, rivers and in the air were hunted and killed. But there was no chase or final fight that 'sportsmen and women' so enjoyed. The fox was not a wolf but it was a wild dog so it could provide a chase as well as the 'fun' of a final fight back or being ripped to pieces. And so the fox was it.

There was a shortage of foxes in many parts of England by the late 16th century (see The Red Paper 2022 vol. 1) and we know that animals were being imported at that time and it seems very likely that fox importation began around this period. Up until that time there had been three variations of Old fox in the UK; variations created by the differing habitats they lived in. 

The Cur or Common fox was small and lived near human settlements where there was an almost symbiotic relationship (as there is today with the Red fox).

The Hill or Mastiff fox. Large and heavily built and living on the hills and mountain slopes.

The Mountain or Greyhound fox. These were the foxes that the 'sportsmen' craved to chase. We have taxidermy Mountain foxes from the early 19th century and they are indeed large. A taxidermy coyotes placed next the what was described as a "perfect example" of a Mountain fox is dwarfed.

These Old foxes all had one distinction and that was the lack of the black ears, socks and muzzle markings. Grey and white are known and there are examples in taxidermy. However, the main colour was overall brown.  We have all of the archival evidence of the past as well as physical taxidermy so there is no doubt that they existed and there is strong anecdotal evidence that Western Europe had its Old type fox which would have been a relative from before the Channel was created 10,000 years or so ago.

"This may coincide with reports of large-scale translocations of foxes into Britain during the nineteenth century for sport hunting" It is not in any way coincidental. By the 1860s red squirrels, various deer and other mammals were being imported after they became locally extinct or dropped in such numbers that there was a threat of loss of 'sport'. The 1860s are noted as a period in which many extinctions took place in the UK and Ireland faced similar with some Mountain foxes being sent as gifts to Irish hunts before the true Mountain fox died out. At one point (known records) up to 2000 plus foxes were imported per year to places such as Leadenhall Market.  Some hunts employed its own fox catchers to travel over to France to trap and bring back foxes.

Also, occasionally a master of the hunt would send a friend at another hunt foxes of various origins. This continued up until the 1930s.

Therefore, DNA similarities between British and French foxes is expected -I sent DEFRA much material back in 2009 so what they did with it I have no idea.

Since the late 1970s when wildlife rescues began to set up and then more into the 1980s and ever since rescued foxes and cubs are looked after until dispersal season at which point they are released into more fox friendly areas so a fox from Kent might end up in somewhere like Gloucestershire.  So, yes, inter-breeding would take place as foxes pair up.

With context the DNA results make sense.  Laboratory work always needs archival research.