Feral foxes in Australia

From tame English forest
Outfoxed by the hounds
The captive is shipped
Off to far southern bounds

In wild Aussie bushland
He hides from the hounds
And preys on the rabbit
That newly abounds

He soon finds a mate
And extinction he brings
To the wildlife estate
Where he is now feral king

Riding to the hounds was very popular among the rich and famous in England in the first half of the 19^th century. Fox hounds, originally developed in the 16^th Century by crossing grey-hounds, fox-terriers and bulldogs, became very common and they made their way to the colonies with the hunt-mad Anglophile colonists.

Fox hunting was an integral part of colonial social status and wealthy colonists invariably had their stable of well bred horses and packs of fox-hounds to go with their fine clothes, large houses and teams of servants. In the early days the Australian colonists had to make do with kangaroos, dingoes and the occasional “bag-fox” imported directly from England whilst they tried their hardest to establish the fox in Australia. There is documented evidence of foxes being introduced into Van Dieman’s Land in 1833 and into the Port Phillip District of NSW (now Victoria) in 1845. The Governor of NSW, Sir Charles Fitzroy, who was the Master of the Sydney Hunt, received two dog foxes from England in 1855 and soon released one:

After being given just a few days to recover from their long sea voyage; one fox was released from a cage at Randwick Heights. Bewildered at first release the imported fox “crouched and crawled forward slowly, looking about him….he raised himself suddenly and made for thick scrub. The hounds were all in leash and the horsemen stationed on a knoll a little way off. The fox kept to a ridge past Maroubra Bay and then turned inland into more open country. He came out on a large open plain and tried to turn back, but the hounds met him and tore him to pieces.

It appears that none of the early importations were successful in establishing the fox in Australia. That didn’t happen until 1871 when a local physician and “acclimatisation” advocate from Ballarat, Dr. King, released a dog fox and two vixens 12 miles west of Ballarat. At about the same time Thomas Chernside released “several foxes” on his 90,000 acre Werribee Park Estate at Point Cook near Melbourne. By this time rabbits had become well established in the area and with this new and abundant food source foxes quickly become established. Wild foxes were sighted near Ballarat in 1874, Laverton in 1878, Corio Bay in 1880 and Bendigo in 1886. By 1990 they had colonised 13,000 square kilometres of Victoria and had become a significant agricultural pest. They followed the rabbit across the Nullarbor and were first sighted at Kalgoorlie in 1917. So it was ultimately all about timing. The newly established rabbit population was expanding rapidly at just the right time to provide sufficient food to establish the fox which also preyed on native species.

Foxes today occupy the whole of sub-tropical Australia and number about 7.2 million animals. They consume an estimated 190 million native birds a year and are the single greatest agent of mammal extinction in Australia with Woylies, Numbats, Bandicoots and other small marsupials being particulalry vulnerable. Tasmania fortunately remains fox free despite many introduction attempts. This is probably due to the presence of the Tasmanian Devil and its ability to eat fox cubs. In recent times, in an act of almost incomprehensible environmental vandalism, there has been a further fox introduction into Tasmania. This time with Devils on the wane due to the facial tumour disease they may get a foothold despite attempts to eradicate them.

Many thanks to http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php/article/hunting-foxes which presents a detailed history of fox introduction into Australia.

Splendid Fairy Wren

Splendid Splendid Wrens
Glorious to see
They lift our spirits high
And are pretty as can be

They keep the insects down
And so protect the trees
We wouldn’t have a forest
If not for such as these

So protect the understory
Of the forest near your home
And you may see the glory
Of the Blue Wrens as they roam

The Splendid Fairy Wren is commonly called the Blue Wren in Western Australia and it is spectacular. They are a socially monogamous but sexually promiscuous species and the male in his electric blue breeding plumage is magnificent. If you are very lucky you may see him presenting bright pink or purple petals to his partner or girlfriend. You are unlikely to see them unless you have the thick bushy understory vegetation that they favour and they are becoming increasingly uncommon as the urban sprawl engulfs more and more bush-land. But just as the wren needs the bushland so does the bushland need the wren. Parkland clearing is becoming very common in Western Australia. People appreciate the large shady trees but they also like the look of the grassy fields which can also feed their horses and other grass-eating pets. What they don’t understand though is that this can spell the doom for the trees. The dead and dying Flooded Gums through the river valleys near Perth are often heavily infested with leaf eating psyillid insects (Lerps) that were once effectively controlled by Blue Wrens and other insect feeding birds that inhabited the now absent understory. We upset the ecological balance at our peril! So do yourself and your bushland a favour and retain the shrubby understory and you may be rewarded with a healthy forest and the uplifting sight of the Splendid Blue Wren.