Important news research from The Conversation shows foxes and the damage they do…
Foxes kill about 300 million native mammals, birds and reptiles each year, and can be found across 80% of mainland Australia, our devastating new research just published reveals.
This research, the first to quantify the national impact of foxes on Australian wildlife, also compares the results to similar studies on cats. And we found foxes and cats collectively kill 2.6 billion mammals, birds and reptiles every year.
This enormous death toll is one of the key reasons Australia’s biodiversity is suffering major declines. Cats and foxes, for example, have played a big role in most of Australia’s 34 mammal extinctions, including the desert rat-kangaroo which rapidly declined once foxes reached their region.
Australia must drastically scale up the management of both predators, to give native wildlife a fighting chance and to help prevent future extinctions.
Read the full article here
