Assessing the relationship between foxes, game birds and predator control

There is an ongoing debate whether the release of gamebirds increases the numbers of opportunistic predators such as foxes. BASC financially supported a large fieldwork project carried out by GWCT to measure fox activity on estates that release gamebirds, with comparator sites that do not.

The key interim findings of the projects are that:

• Fox activity changes throughout the year, with peaks in June to August.
• More fox scats were found on non-release sites than on sites that release game, during the summer in the first year only.
• At other times of the year during the 19-month study there was no difference in fox activity between gamebird release and non-release sites.

Gamebird release sites have more red kites, buzzards, and brown hares than non-release sites and non-release sites have more magpies than release sites.

A paper with final results and findings is currently being reviewed.