Allen S. Moore
Well-known member
There wouldn't be a deliberate legal introduction, but I've met some breathtakingly stupid people here who see no issue with the introduction of foxes to Tassie, including one Tasmanian I used to work with: "Some people like to shoot them for sport and why shouldn't Tasmanians also have that opportunity?", or something like that...
Yes, it's a dumb, crass argument, but it's a hunters' argument. Nuff said...
As we know from these islands, there is never any logic in hunters' arguments.
We had a similar experience in the Isle of Man, from where foxes are absent, as are a number of other species of mammals that live across the water in Britain. Round about 1990 it was realised that some half wit had released some foxes in the Island, for hunting, it was claimed. At least 2 foxes were killed on roads near Peel, another was actually shot by a public spirited fellow and a family of young was found and sent to the UK, the presumed source of the releases. Reports of foxes have dwindled since those days, although an old lady, who lived in a nursing home just up the road from where I live, reported a fox on the lawn of the home about two years ago. It was reported at the time that she was familiar with foxes from when she lived in the UK, so it must have been a fox that she was seeing. However, wouldn't foxes "thin out" the local domestic cat population, something that hasn't happened?
I remember just after the fox releases on the Isle of Man that reports of releases on Tasmania were on the BBC news. "Not there as well," I remember thinking.
Allen