People ask why it is important to find out whether Bristol University Mammal Study Group under Prof. Stephen Harris released mange into the Bristol fox population.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s I never came across a fox with mange. It was not unknown but fox watchers treated as they could. Suddenly 1994/1995 and foxes are dropping all over the City with mange. Only 6% of the urban population was left.
There are problems here.
1. I cannot track down of widespread mange in foxes outside the City.
2. It was stated that a fox the Uni team were tracking "suddenly" left Bristol "for no apparent reason". A couple weeks later it returned as mysteriously with mange.
3. One tracked fox with mange would return to its former territory so you might expect a mange outbreak in one area and slowly spread out. This outbreak of mange hit the entire fox population and this is extraordinary and I can find no literature citing similar examples.
I wrote to Prof. Harris. I emailed him and even tried phoning him between 1997-2002 and never got a response to simple and polite questions. Over the phone I was told my message would be passed on. Nothing. In 2013 I again wrote a polite letter to Prof. Harris and...nothing.
Based on geographical and other obstacles as well as territorial behaviour I estimate that mange would need to hit north, south, west and eastern parts of the City to cause such an outbreak.
I wondered whether the weather might be a factor; weather in South-west England and the wider UK during 1994/1995 was notable for a transition from a very wet, stormy winter into one of the hottest and driest summers on record. The 12-month period from November 1994 to October 1995 was the warmest recorded in the Central England Temperature (CET) series, dating back to 1659.
Could that have been a factor? No idea since any records on the outbreak are not open to the public or naturalists.
There are too many unanswered questions and the truth -based on what is recorded- is that no one involved in Bristol University's fox study noted or mapped the spread of the outbreak but simply counted dead foxes.
All these questions SHOULD raise concerns amongst animal lovers or naturalists but it seems I am the only person who would like facts. Incidentally the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food (MAFF) and its successor Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) who SHOULD have had an interest in such an outbreak both told me that they had "nothing in the records" about the 1994/1995 outbreak.
Maybe I am just paranoid?
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