Unwin - RSPB Spotlight: Foxes

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This electronic edition published in 2015 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published 2015

text, Mike Unwin, 2015

photographs as credited , 2015

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Contents

Meet the Red Fox

Hero or villain? Few animals divide opinion like the Red Fox. This remarkable wild canine has lived cheek by jowl with people across the northern hemisphere for thousands of years. Celebrated by some for its resourcefulness and lush red coat, reviled by others for killing livestock and raiding bins, it has worked its way deep into culture, leaving fact sometimes hard to separate from fiction. However, behind the myth, folklore and lurid headlines lies a remarkable natural history success story.

Best foot forward: a Red Fox on a mission.

One reason why the Red Fox looms so large in our collective consciousness is its sheer visibility. Ironically, while the urban, industrial and agricultural transformations of our modern landscape have driven many wild British species into decline, Foxes have become steadily more conspicuous and successful. Indeed, for the average British suburbanite, this unmistakable wild animal our boldest terrestrial predator is probably the most commonly seen native mammal. While the urban myth persists that in London you are never more than a yard from a Rat, it is a safe bet that the average Londoner lays eyes on a Fox far more frequently.

Science tells us that the Red Fox is a member of the Vulpes genus of true foxes, one of 10 genera in the dog family Canidae. It is the only species of wild canid found in the UK and enjoys the widest natural distribution of any non-human land mammal on the planet. Science also explains how the species great versatility, including a catholic diet and broad habitat tolerance, has allowed it to survive and adapt where other carnivores have failed not least in the hearts of our cities.

Science, of course, is not the whole story. Something about this charismatic animal a creature that has, for better or worse, become the living embodiment of wily has driven it deep into our culture, imagination and even politics. To understand how this has happened, we must take a closer look at the animal itself.

An emblem depicting a Fox and a goose in the town hall in Vohenstrauss, Bavaria, Germany.

Worldwide wanderer

The Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes), known in the UK simply as the Fox, is the most widespread and numerous of about 22 species around the world that bear the name fox. It is found not only throughout the British Isles and mainland Europe, but also ranges east through Asia as far as Japan, west across North America to Alaska, and south to India, the Middle East and the northern fringes of Africa. To the north the frozen Arctic tundra provides a natural range limit, and the species is absent from many Arctic islands, including Greenland, although climate change may already be helping it to surmount this barrier.

A warm winter coat protects the Red Fox in cold climates.

Add to this natural range the Foxs successful colonisation of Australia, where it was introduced during the mid-1800s, and the total area over which it roams adds up to some 70 million sq km (more than 27 million sq miles). This gives the Red Fox, after our own species, the most extensive natural range of any land mammal on the planet. In other words, our Fox an animal inseparable from the British notion of the British countryside is a highly cosmopolitan species. Indeed, some scientists have proposed more than 48 subspecies around the globe.

The worldwide distribution of the Red Fox.

Graveyards offer plentiful refuges for urban Red Foxes.

The key to this global success is the Foxs ability to get on in almost any habitat. It occurs in forests, mountains, moorland, grassland, farmland, urban areas and desert fringes, ranging from sea level up to an altitude of 3,000m (9,845ft), sometimes more. Its essential needs are food and denning sites, and Foxes tend to fare best in mixed landscapes those comprising, for example, a hotchpotch of woodland, farmland and scrub where they find plenty of both. Thus homogenous habitats, such as dense forests or barren uplands, may support just one Red Fox per 45 sq km (12 sq miles), whereas more varied ones, such as farmland and deciduous woodland, typically support 12 Foxes per square kilometre.

The last UK Red Fox census, taken in 19992000, suggested a stable overall population of some 230,000 animals, before cubs are born. This averages out at roughly two Foxes per square kilometre across the country. However, population densities vary hugely by habitat. Remote Scottish hill country may support just one Fox per 30 sq km (11 sq miles), whereas urban areas may support 45 Foxes in just a single square kilometre. Indeed, during the early 1990s, Bristol city centre boasted an astonishing 37 Foxes per square kilometre the highest population density ever recorded anywhere.