After 11 years Tasmania’s publicly-funded fox hunting program has yet to produce one fox by their own efforts.
No trapped foxes, no shot foxes, no poisoned foxes, and no images of foxes from thousands of hours of sensor camera operations; and most importantly no evidence of breeding.
Yet according to University of Canberra’s Professor Stephen Sarre Tasmania has been home to at least 18 defecating foxes.
After importing over 1000 fox scats from the Australian mainland over several years and claiming their fox-detector dogs were integral to their surveillance efforts, DPIPWE’s scent-tracking dogs are not able to detect the foxes responsible for this very small number of widely dispersed scats.
In 2005 DNA tested scats have turned out to be ‘fox-positive’ from Boat Harbour to Gladstone and from near Devonport to Geeveston; the DNA test even reported a positive result on a scat collected Bruny Island.
DPIPWE came to the conclusion that a fox-positive scat must mean there were foxes on Bruny Island. They searched for foxes on Bruny Island, they searched for more fox scats… nothing was found to support that assumption.
This should have been a “light-bulb moment” for this national program. The obvious thing to do would have been to review the emphasis or weight this program gave to their basic assumption: scat detection = fox presence.
So did the Fox Program go back and check their chain of custody, the possibility of error in field collection, mislabelling, or the possibility of DNA-contamination in either the field or the laboratory? Who knows?
Yet since 2005 DPIPWE had provided Professor Sarre’s laboratory in Canberra with nearly 10,000 field-collected shits and he has reported that 63 scats from Tasmania reacted positively in his fox-DNA test.
The research published by Professor Sarre and his colleagues a few days ago is based on that old data.
Scats… the media tarts that they are in Tasmania have been flogged mercilessly through virtually every media outlet in State… but still those enigmatic crappers remain at large.
So I ask how can Professor Sarre claim that there’s a ‘small but widespread population of foxes in Tasmania’ based on a small widespread collection of crap?
Interviewed on ABC News 24 Professor Sarre was asked: How many foxes do you think there are in Tasmania?
Professor Stephen Sarre: Well, we don’t know how many foxes there are in Tasmania. Ahh… what we do know is that, ahhm… of the 50 or more, ahh… droppings that we’ve been able to detect as having fox DNA, we’ve been able to DNA profile 18 of them and every one of those scats has been unique [i.e. a different animal]. So, ahh… it represents, ahh… droppings from, ahh… different animals. So we know there have been at least 18 animals, ahh… free-living in Tasmania in the last few years.
And yet at this unquantifiable - very low density – fox density Tasmania managed to produce three dead foxes assumed to be road killed; one in 2003 [at Burnie] and two in 2006 [at Lillico on the Bass Highway and on Glen Esk Road in the Midlands].
So it seems it was easier to run down a fox or three crossing a road than it is to shoot one, trap one, poison one or take a picture of one.
The well-funded program in Tasmania still cannot find any foxes – dead or alive.
Dr Sarre, how does your scat science explain this decade-long enigma?
Show Comments
Comments (6)
Forgetting foxes frequently leads us to question the funding arrangements from the Commonwealth to our Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries Parks Water and Environment. Any pursuant glance at the figures would raise Erich Abetz’ eyebrows, $58m for foxes (FFTF), $12m for Two Capes Track Tasman (FTCT), how much for other ‘projects’, and who of the DPIPWE are the comfy snoozers who put the funding deal together? I sthis project funding being used in place of recurrent instead of the project?
Back to our friend, Vulpes vulpes, the Red Fox, Reynard, Basil Brush call the animal what you will, the whole saga has gone beyond mere individuals, potential enquiries or the media. The Pom science journal editor who was responsible for putting that paper in print will be lucky to rescue the journal’s reputation, assuming rigour is still a part of the Scientific method? The whole thing is now the basis for television documentary/comedy/tradgedy, anyone want the film rights? Special price for you….
Yes exhaustive auditing of scat collection and analysis methods would be a first step before considering ongoing funding.
Assume also the worst of human nature as the benchmark for this audit.
I wonder if Professor Sarre has mainland correlation between road kills and confirmed fox sightings/kills on the North island; not that will prove anything conclusively.
Again I think for the purpose of critical analysis we must assume the worst of human nature.
How detailed have been the forensic examinations of lamb and fowl losses and what might that database show us?
Duncan # 2 Lamb and fowl losses?
The only saliva tests done on poultry or lambs has been on the Kathleen Drive Old Beach chooks, you know the ones where the “fox contaminated” chicken blood was found.
Same address the cameras were deployed….no fox.
Same address that the saliva tested dead chooks came from that returned positive canine - dog DNA.
Belonging too, I am to believe,the same small terriers that killed the chooks.
#3 Ian,
Looks very very dodgy if this is the case.
No database, no positive kill based data.
Anyone?
Would’nt we be looking at least three independent verification methodolgies producing some corroborating result, for the confidence to invest tens of millions?
The danger is real and well justified, granted, but it looks like a self energising loop of human error fueled by fear and self aggrandisement.
Where else have we seen this in Tassie, hmmm !
Is this the real “pestilence” ?
Yes Mr Duncan Mills, another instance of this same pestilence can be found in the headquarters upstairs in the Forestry Tasmania boardroom.
Currently this lot are trying to bribe the Tasmanian government and the Federal government with easing their plunders throughout this State’s Forests, (another failing gambit no less,) in exchange for well over a hundred million dollars, an enormous amount of money, to suggest they are going to mend their ways again.
This crowd above are just as malignant as are those associated with the falsified Fox theorem that some highly paid highly educated government dust-coat wearing individual has been set to the task of pumping up a spattering of dubious claimed material into a quasi scientific report.
Well Duncan #4, It looks very dodgy because it is! You have to continue to wonder why the FEP Farce Force do not have/ will not release any positive data to support this ridiculous program. Dog hair is dog hair which ever way you test it, you can’t make it into something it is not! They have nothing to back up this waste or it would have been released long ago, yes this is the worst of human nature at work- shameful!