40 plus years of published research

 No UK university or college has a biology department which studies flora and fauna in the field. They were shut down in the early 1990s as they did not draw in enough cash donations. In England if you try to study badgers you will find that every obstacle that can be put in your ways by -Health and Safety will not permit post mortems due to "the high risk from bovine TB".  What they mean is that if we had 50 badger5s and all were TB free then that raises awkward questions for the Government -and we know that to hit badger cull numbers they are openly allowing tested and TB free badger clans to be slaughtered.

You will get no money to study badgers (outside the UK badgers are seen as a "scapegoat" species used to distract from the real problem). I tried to look for funding but no luck.

Foxes? Forget it.  I tried to get my first grant 40 years ago and tried almost yearly since and that includes European Union grants.  In the UK too many people in government have "field sport" connections: why do you think so many hunts breaking the law get fines but continue and are not disbanded because of performing criminal acts and wildlife crimes  -proven in court?  

Also the gun goons, men and women who go out every night to shoot dozens of foxes whether cubs, pregnant vixens or adult foxes for 'fun' why do they have guns to kill wildlife and why7 are they allowed to shoot around the suburbs of towns and even in woods and round terrain in towns?  Oh, a number of these "clubs" include off duty police officers so that answers that question.

The fox population has been dropping very quickly and I noted this in the 1980s and 1990s and in some areas of Wales there are no foxes -photographers and naturalists actually travel to Bristol t6o see foxes as "We haven't got any back home!"

Every discovery I have made about the original Old fox types of the UK and Ireland, successive fox populations, near extinctions and so much more have all been funded out of my very small pocket.  Foxes and badgers are more than likely going to become very rare and in large areas of the UK extinct by the 2030s.  Who cares? Certainly not the many naturalist groups I have  posted on who seem to see the two species as "photo ops" but otherwise needing to be ignored.  Yes, supposed naturalists are sitting back and just watching extinctions happen.

"A nation of animal lovers" is what the myth will tell you.

I have tried every possible angle to get EU funding to continue the Fox work and, sadly, as one learned person put it to me: "you are a white male" -which I found ridiculous until I saw that EU funding appears to be granted in the main to "diversified persons" which tend to be far from interested in those "dirty foxes".

Field naturalists are a Red Listed species and now we are (I assume there are others out there!) not fitting the politically correct norm.  I really have no personal interest in ticking the right sex, race or whatever box needs to be ticked -good luck to you if you tick all the boxes! My soul interest is to study and educate on the foxes we have and trace their origins (which are far from Western Europe) and in trying to do so I have found people at museums and so called "experts" (with very -very- rare exceptions) to be not just uncooperative but downright rude and unwilling to study the data. In case you are wondering; a scientist is supposed to look at data, analyse it, see what they can find and prove/disprove something and then report back on it.  Perhaps the life time job and free lunches for towing and never deviating from the dogma line is the reason for this?

Read a book on foxes today and you have read every fox book published since the 1930s as one author grabs from another author and I found one line in particular about foxes literally word-for-word in ten books by "experts" (isn't copy and paste so delightful?).

Even the suppression of data from the fox deaths study shows what is going on.  If you want a life in natural history or wildlife go to Europe but do not expect too much from self professed experts.

There. My moan for the day done and dusted before I go on to look at the files and wondering whether digging deeper back into Old British fox history is worth while since even the 40 plus years of published research is not attracting any interest.

You will never earn a living in wildlife work.