All the Rhetoric on the Fox or No Fox seems to be dividing people into opposing camps.
Surely after years of no results, no firm evidence, in other words a fresh Tasmanian fox to confirm Reynard’s establishment in Tasmania … the Tasmanian Government could not be that thick.
The allegations of fox cub imports were untrue, proven beyond all doubt by a Tasmania Police investigation.
After the Police investigations we have a fox skin and then the two week old rancid, rotting carcass.
More and more “sightings”, the media whipped into a frenzy and claims that if the fox gets established here the wool industry and the tourist industry may go broke!
We then have a $50,000 reward posted for the conviction of the people involved in the fox smuggling (as yet unclaimed).
Still more “sightings” but no hard evidence; not one photograph from the remote cameras, no sets of footprints from all the sand traps, no freshly shot fox from the thousands and thousands of spotlighting hours in Tasmania, and not one fox carcass recovered after 40,000? baits were laid across the State.
Labelled a roadkill
But a dead fox appears on the roadside in Burnie, hasn’t eaten for about a week, but it is labeled a roadkill.
Just about everyone in Burnie now knows how that fox carcass got there, but it is conveniently tagged a roadkill.
Just about every politician in Tasmania is terrified of this fox topic, just in case there may be a element of truth in it all, but afterall it is only taxpayers’ money.
But while ever we have the “fear of foxes” we will have the condoning of the usage of 1080.
Maybe when a few more million dollars are spent on this debacle a judicial inquiry, the rules of evidence, may be in order.
After all it is only taxpayers’ money.
Ian Rist “has taken great interest in the Fox issue since his alarm at the possibility of foxes being introduced and the media interest and the hysteria this topic has caused. He has done thousands of hours of research on this topic, and is convinced the Public has been fed a lot of mistruths …”
Sandra John
May 22, 2005 at 12:04
Thank you Ian Rist for a readable summary of the (zero)evidence for the presence of foxes in Tasmania.
I particularly enjoyed mention of the hysterical media claims that, “… if the fox gets established here the wool industry and the tourist industry may go broke”.
Just in case anyone really thinks so I suggest they look around them a bit. Wool producers on the mainland aren’t (currently) going broke and when they were it wasn’t foxes that did it.
As to tourism, there is an enormous single threat to Tasmania’s wildlife and, “clean green”, tourist image but it isn’t a fox – not a real one anyway.
Alasdair
May 23, 2005 at 05:10
I can categorically confirm a fox sighting around 9:30 25 April 2004 on the back road to Deloraine. As a recently converted mainlander I’ve seen and shot plenty of the varmints and this was a fox no mistake. I din’t think much of it at the time “Hey a fox” but there you go.
Sandra John
May 23, 2005 at 07:21
Dear Alisdair,
That is very interesting (as is your description of foxes as, “varmints”, as they say in the U.S.); what a shame you had no camera with you to shoot this one with.
I am not questioning your veracity or observational skills and sightings are obviously relevant to the argument. At the same time it is, as it stands, just another isolated and unsubstantiated, sighting for which there is no hard evidence.
In Ian Rists’ words, “Still more “sightings†but no hard evidence; not one photograph from the remote cameras, no sets of footprints from all the sand traps, no freshly shot fox from the thousands and thousands of spotlighting hours in Tasmania, and not one fox carcass recovered after 40,000? baits were laid across the State”.
That is very odd don’t you think? If what you saw was a fox it must be a very lonely one.
editor
May 25, 2005 at 04:17
I refer to Ian Rist’s ‘Terror of foxes’ (TT 23/5/5), specifically his comments on the fox found dead by the police at Burnie in 2003.
The fox was fresh dead on the roadside near the port. Post-mortem examination shows it was killed by a heavy impact on the head, consistent with being hit by a vehicle or otherwise forcefully struck. The fox’s stomach was empty but there were what appeared to be rat fur in the lower intestine, meaning it had not eaten for maybe a day or had vomited recently, not that it “hadn’t eaten for about a week”.
The fox was a female in her prime. At that time (spring) she should have been breeding but examination showed she wasn’t and never had. There seemed nothing ‘wrong’ with her so the suggestion is she did not have access to any adult male foxes. If she was living free in Tasmania that’s good news of course (unfortunately she was too young to have been the 1998 Burnie fox).
The various rumours we heard were that the fox had been killed on or about the dock, either on a ship, on the dock itself or even in a container, and then quickly dumped on the roadside, presumably to take focus away from the port per se.
This may be true since a fox indeed ‘escaped’ a ship berthing there in 1998 and the risks are arguably even greater now with increased shipping.
However, we will never know because nobody has provided any evidence beyond rumour and innuendo, exactly the stuff Rist criticises us for considering elsewhere. Well, we must consider all such reports but will favour the ones with physical evidence. That’s why I say the balance of evidence is toward a road-kill.
Maybe it’s Australia’s love of larrikins but isn’t it time Mr Rist, that you and other critics had something to say about the actual people hoaxing things as you suggest. They are the ones who create the problem. We have identified several hoaxes (a couple blatant enough to be funny) but until people take this issue seriously it will be a lurking problem and could drive willingness to respond to incursions of all sorts of exotic species ever lower.
Nick Mooney
Nature Conservation Branch
DPIWE
25/5/05
Sandra John
May 25, 2005 at 15:09
Nick Mooney, Nature Conservation Branch, DPIWE, 25/5/05 wrote, in connection: with the fox found dead on the roadside near Burnie in 2003, that post mortem evidence showed that, she was female, in her prime, had never bred, hadn’t eaten for perhaps a day (or had vomited recently); had been recently killed by a heavy impact on the head consistent with being hit by a vehicle or otherwise forcefully struck, and; was rumoured to have been killed in or about the dock then dumped on the roadside.
I can’t see how it can be concluded from this that the balance of evidence is toward a road-kill. It only takes about twelve hours for the ferry to cross the Strait and, if the fox was stuck on the head only, I should say the balance of evidence was towards it’s having been, “otherwise forcefully struckâ€, by someone wielding a heavy object. The rumoured history, obviously, supports this conclusion.
But I do agree it is time the critics had something to say about the people perpetrating hoaxes. I suppose they think they are funny but it represents the same gross disrespect of the lives and wellbeing of animals as characterises Australian society in general and, I should say, Tasmania in particular.
Killing animals may be unavoidable sometimes but we don’t have to like it and we don’t have to do any more of it than is absolutely necessary (whatever that means). We certainly don’t have to take the cruellest possible way of doing it (I mean 1080 and inhumane shooting) and we shouldn’t be tolerating irresponsible behaviours that display the sort of disrespect that promotes indifference and cruelty.
Mr Mooney is right; this particular problem has been created by those who stirred up the, “terror of foxesâ€, to which Mr Rist refers and, hence, the over-reactive, forward defence offensives to which he and others object.
But is the hoaxing perhaps, as Mr Mooney suggests, just a refusal to take the problem of exotic incursions seriously? What is the motive of these, ‘hoaxersâ€, and what is this, “terror of foxesâ€, they have successfully tapped into? Why is it so easy to stir up this, “terror”?
I see no, “lurking problemâ€, issuing in a reluctance to respond to, “incursions of exotic species”. On the contrary; public acceptance of on-going 1080 offensives against potentially existent exotics, suggests a very high level of willingness to respond. The, “hoaxersâ€, must be very pleased with themselves when they consider how little effort it took to mobilize that offensive (and the result can’t have been unwelcome either to those with an interest in selling or laying this poison).
If there is a, â€lurking problemâ€, it is the fearful greediness and cold indifference of humankind; our reluctance to give other forms of life a fair share of the Earth’s bounty and; our too great readiness to resort to barbarous short term, “solutions”, to problems of our own making.
The only thing to be said in favour of the 1080 strategy is that extinguishing by poisoning native populations is a grand old Tasmanian tradition.