Carnivorous Nights

by Margaret Mittelbach

  In the annals of animal introductions, the fox is as bad as it gets. The Australian government classifies the fox as a threat to the survival of numerous endangered and vulnerable animals. Foxes will kill any creature smaller than themselves. They have been involved in six animal extinctions over the past 150 years, and are currently threatening the survival of ten other Australian species, including mammals, birds, even a species of tortoise.

  Somehow (over nearly two centuries of European settlement), Tasmania was spared the fox. And as a result, all kinds of animals that are extinct or very rare on the Australian mainland thrive there. Tasmania has served as a Noah's ark for creatures such as Tasmanian pademelons and several smaller creatures in the macropod superfamily (potoroos, Tasmanian bettongs), as well as two “native cats” better known as the spotted-tailed quoll and the Eastern quoll. But Tasmania's fox-free status—the ark— had recently sprung a leak.

  On the outskirts of Launceston, we met with Chris Parker, the field supervisor for the Fox Free Tasmania Taskforce. Chris was a big man, six feet three inches, with a sunburned face and light curly hair. He wore a gray polo shirt with the task force's insignia, a fox bursting out of a map of the island and being crossed out by the “x” in the word “fox.”

  He ushered us into the task force's Operations Room and showed us a wall-sized map of Tasmania. It was studded with green, blue, yellow, and red pins. “Each of these represents a fox sighting,” he said. “Yellow ones are unlikely, green ones are possible, blue ones are excellent, and the red ones are dead foxes. We've had two dead.” The two red pins were just south of Launceston.

  The fox task force is a branch of the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, but it looked more like the offices of Interpol or Quantico. Posters of rusty red, bushy-tailed canids were plastered on the walls, describing their habits and asking citizens to be on the lookout for suspicious characters: “Watch for foxes.” Sightings could be phoned in to the task force hotline—1-300-FOX-OUT—twenty-four hours a day.

  Before being appointed to the task force, Chris had performed a variety of jobs for the Parks Service, including relocating fur seals that were raiding fishing traps. His size and his ease in the ocean (he grew up surfing in Tasmania's treacherous waters) made him a perfect match for the job. But now he mostly stayed in the office, coordinating anti-fox operations and sending officers out to investigate sightings. Chris handed us a manual, Managing Vertebrate Pests: Foxes. The cover pictured two fugitive foxes, one gazing into the camera with the defiance of a serial killer and the other gripping an unidentified marsupial in its jaws. Inside, there was a lurid photo of a blood-soaked lamb, the handiwork of a fox.

  On a whiteboard covered with numerous rough drawings, someone had been illustrating a lecture on the fox's gait, footprints, and claws. Beneath it on a table was a polished white fox skull, and next to that were several vials containing long, thin pieces of scat. They were waiting to be analyzed, Chris said. “So far, we've found four scats that have been from foxes.”

  Chris grew up in Devonport, the city where the Spirit of Tasmania ferry docks, bringing in as many as 650 vehicles per day and 1,400 passengers. It's not far from Burnie, the port town on the northwest coast where the thin line between Tasmania and foxes first became apparent. In 1998, a worker at the Burnie dock saw a red fox jump off a container ship that was arriving from Melbourne's Webb Dock. As it happens, Webb Dock is home to one of the densest fox populations in the world. It's almost as if an army of foxes was massing on the border, just waiting for a chance to invade. In the Burnie incident, a mainland fox had apparently stowed away, hopping on at Webb Dock and hopping off in Tasmania. A frenzied chase ensued. Vulpine footprints were found in the sand at a nearby beach. But the fox was never caught. There was talk about tightening up Tasmania's borders and quarantine regulations. And wildlife experts like Chris began to gnaw their fingernails.

  Then in 2001, a flurry of red fox sightings was reported near Longford, a small country town in Tasmania's Midlands just south of Launceston. A vacationing couple from England recognized the sound of two foxes calling to each other. A farmer said his chook house was attacked by a fox; he nearly cornered it but it slipped away. Then a respected naturalist had a close-range sighting in the same vicinity. The Tasmanian government became so concerned that expert foxhunters and their hounds were brought in from the mainland. It was thought these professional hunters would quickly track down the fugitives, and the hunters were accompanied by armed Tasmanians ready to shoot the fox on sight. Locally, the hunt stirred up high spirits. There were wagers on when the fox would be caught. Conspiracy theories flew through the community about how the foxes got there in the first place. And one local pub owner began serving up Boag's beer with a fox stole around his neck.

  Unfortunately, the dogs from the mainland proved useless in the Tasmanian landscape. They weren't used to seeing so much wildlife and were easily distracted. “They certainly flushed out a lot of wallaby,” said Chris. “They had never seen wallaby in numbers quite like that before and all of a sudden they're bouncing around everywhere and it's like, ‘Gee, look at this!’ ”

  When the foxhunters and their hounds left, some Tasmanians began to wonder if the fox had existed at all. Infrared cameras set up by the Parks and Wildlife Service to catch foxes in flagrante turned up only photos of native creatures and crabby-looking feral cats. It was all starting to remind people on the island of Tasmanian tiger sightings and the subsequent searches that came to naught.

  But the fox story didn't end there. Soon after the foxhounds went home, a pair of mystery men sent a photograph of themselves (heads lowered to conceal their faces) to Tasmania's leading newspaper; the photo showed them holding a dead fox and standing underneath a signpost for the town of Longford. They told the newspaper they didn't want to reveal their identities because they had been hunting without a permit on private property and were afraid of being prosecuted. Parks and Wildlife officials pleaded with the two men through the media to turn in the carcass, assuring them there would be no consequences. After a series of cloak-and-dagger phone calls, the hunters agreed to give the authorities the fox's skin—and true to their word, they sent it in to the parks service through the mail. It arrived unpreserved, putrid, and stinking of decay.

  Around the same time, another hunter brought in the dead body of a fox. He said he had shot it in Symmons Plain near Longford. When scientists analyzed the stomach contents of this second dead fox, they found it had eaten small Tasmanian animals—most notably a type of mouse that's only found on the island. The physical evidence was mounting.

  Shortly thereafter, DNA analysis of both the fox skin and the dead body showed the two foxes were close relatives and that they came from southern Victoria on the mainland—from a rural population. They hadn't come from the urban population at Melbourne's Webb Dock. So how had they gotten into Tasmania?

  The Parks and Wildlife Service came to the conclusion that the foxes had been smuggled in. And some people even began throwing around the word “eco-terrorism.” One of the rumors circulating around Longford was that a member of the community had illegally imported and hand-raised two litters of fox pups and released them for the purpose of hunting them. There was a police investigation—but no one was ever identified, charged, or arrested. Even if the alleged eco-vandals had been caught, the courts couldn't have done much about it. The statute of limitations on illegal wildlife importation—six months—had already run out.

  “As far as we can tell,” Chris said, “twelve cubs were intentionally released in the Longford area. Many Tasmanians go to the mainland to go foxhunting. They see those foxes, and they think it's just good fun shooting them. They don't think of the fact that they don't see any other animals there.”

  If the perpetrators had wanted to introduce foxhunting in Tasmania, they got their wish. The hunt was on.

  Stopping the foxes has become a national priority. Losing the thylacine was bad enough. Now Tasmania was looking at a possib
le cascade of mammal extinctions.

  The Parks and Wildlife Service set up the fox task force, bringing in marksmen, dog handlers, trackers, publicists, computer experts, statisticians, and geneticists. The task force's sole purpose was to hunt down and kill the foxes before they bred.

  In its first year, the task force documented 450 fox sightings all across the island. They ranked them using the same screening process used to rate Tasmanian tiger sightings. How close was the witness to the animal? Had the witness ever seen a picture of a fox? Had the witness been drinking? The sightings ranged in quality from very poor to accurate. Using the best sightings, the task force identified hot spots and focused their eradication efforts in those areas. Such efforts included conducting nightly armed foxhunts and burying thousands and thousands of poison baits in the hope that the curious foxes would dig them up, eat them, and die.

  One of the problems the task force faces is that foxes are highly elusive. According to biologists, as many as six foxes can be living on every square kilometer of land in an area before they're even detected. “Because of the amount of wilderness and gorse, the Tasmanian countryside is a very good habitat for them to hide in,” said Chris. It's also full of food. “We have so many small animals—little bettongs, bandicoots, rabbits, rats, ground-dwelling parrots, rufous wallabies, possums—it's just a banquet for foxes.”

  If the Fox Free Tasmania Taskforce is not successful, the foxes' growing population would not even be apparent for ten or fifteen years. “Then ground parrots and things like the Eastern barred bandicoot—because they're not at high numbers to start with—they would disappear very quickly … If the foxes are breeding, we're going to lose the battle. I suppose time will be the judge of it all.”

  So far—after hundreds of all-nighters—the task force hadn't caught any foxes. They weren't even sure if they had seen any. It was like they were chasing a red fog.

  But the good news was that they did have some kills under their belts. Chris pointed to the big map and to a six-mile stretch of road along the Midlands Highway between Campbelltown and Conara Junction. It was jammed with yellow, blue, and green pins. Some of these “fox” sightings were not very good. People were seeing “foxes” with fluffy white tails and catlike heads. And that muddied the waters for the task force. “What we do in an area with a lot of sightings—if there's any sort of confusion between cats and foxes—we'll take the cats out.”

  “You take them out?” we said.

  “We shoot them.” So far, the task force had shot a total of 136 cats.

  Alexis's eyes widened. Maybe the Vroom Museum had a future after all.

  We wondered. If people sometimes confused cats with foxes …We asked if we could look over a few sighting reports. Chris showed us an inchthick folder, and we flipped through it. Quite a few reports described the fox accurately, or nearly so. The words “sly” and “skulking” were frequently used. After reading through about twenty sightings, we found one that seemed suggestive. A couple driving home from their golf club on Tasmania's east coast had reported seeing the following to a task force officer: “Gingery/sandy animal, dog-like, bigger than cat. No eye shine, unusual, ‘bouncing’ gait. Animal moved toward them on opposite road edge. Then moved into roadside bush.”

  We looked up. “Is it possible people ever mistake thylacines for foxes?” we asked.

  Chris gave us the hairy eyeball.

  “Ahhhhh …” Clearly, he was stalling, trying to think of a way to be polite. But then he just gave up. “If you want to believe in thylacines, you'll believe in fairies.”

  “Don't a lot of people here believe it?”

  “A lot of people want to believe. That's the whole thing, yeah? It was an animal that wasn't scared of humans—and that was probably its biggest downfall. There's plenty of documented evidence of people walking along trails and turning around and there'd be a thylacine coming along behind them. Or they'd walk through a camp in the night. Why does this animal stop doing that ? Basically, it disappeared. Extinction.”

  “What do you think of the cloning project?” Alexis asked.

  “Interesting,” Chris said. He could see why the cloning scientists would want to bring the thylacine back. “It's like any extinct animal. It's a tragedy to think that humans wiped out something.” He paused to reflect. “That's exactly what stopping foxes in Tasmania is all about, stopping further extinctions. Because if foxes get established, that's what will happen.”

  “Then you'll really need to send in the clones,” said Alexis. “You'll have to clone every mammal in Tasmania.”

  17. THE RED FOG

  That evening we met Ken Wright, one of several fox eradication officers employed by the Tasmanian government. He was in his mid-forties and had the deeply tanned, sunburned face of an outdoorsman, just beginning to be slashed with crow's-feet. His outfit included khaki slacks, a white shirt rolled up at the sleeves, wire-rimmed glasses, and a brown Akubra hat—the emblem of outback Australia—that matched the color of his short, wiry brown beard. If he'd had a bronze star pinned to his shirt, instead of a Parks and Wildlife patch that pictured a snarling Tasmanian devil, we might have taken Ken for the ghost of Wyatt Earp. His slender, intelligent face exuded a quiet authority.

  Ken had picked us up at our motel in Launceston, and we drove south on the Midlands Highway, entering a flat terrain of farm fields lined with hedgerows. Low forested hills hung in the distance. The Midlands was the most British-influenced section of Tasmania, with some of the towns resembling English country villages. But once you got out onto the farmland, it was more like the Wild West.

  Ken was taking us foxhunting, something he did virtually every night. As we sped past the hedgerows, the sky turned from pale pink to purple. We all sat quiet, admiring the vast landscape.

  “So this is an unusual job,” Alexis said finally. “Did you ever think you'd be working as a professional foxhunter in Tasmania?”

  “Bloody no.”

  Ken had worked for twenty-five years shearing sheep in South Australia, Queensland, Victoria, and Tasmania. “That's about as Australian a job as you can get,” he said.

  Some days, he would shear 160 sheep, one every ninety seconds or so. It was backbreaking work, but he liked country life, raising dogs, hunting, riding. As a sideline back in the 1970s, he had hunted foxes on the mainland and sold their pelts to the fur industry for making stoles, jackets, trimmings. That was when fur was still popular. “Course it's not trendy to wear fur anymore,” Ken said. “So the whole industry of selling fox skins basically collapsed. When the skins were worth money, foxes were controlled a lot better.”

  From an early age, Ken had learned there were all kinds of ways to hunt a fox. The most common method was spotlighting, nabbing a fox in a beam of light and shooting him with a high-powered rifle. Sometimes he would use dogs—terriers in particular—who sniffed out foxes and drove them out of their dens or along creek lines toward waiting guns.

  “We'd also whistle them in the morning.”

  “You just whistle and they'll come?” asked Alexis.

  “Yeah, you whistle like a rabbit caught in a trap. And you make it plaintive.” He showed us a whistle he kept under the dash. The fox thinks he's headed toward a conveniently injured rabbit—a tasty meal. What he gets instead is a bullet in the head.

  “It doesn't always work,” Ken went on. “You get an experienced fox, an older fox, he may have been whistled at before and shot at, so he turns tail and runs.”

  As Ken drove down the highway, he pointed off into the countryside at what was believed to be the epicenter of the fox outbreak. “Just over there about five kilometers, that's where we think the litters of fox cubs were raised and released.” In the last year, there had been dozens of sightings in and around this stretch of highway.

  Ken said our destination was a sheep and cattle property near the town of Powranna in the Northern Midlands. This area is the heart and soul of Tasmanian sheep farming—home to about 750,000 sheep in a c
ommunity with a human population of about twelve thousand. Most of the farmers in the district were letting the fox task force search their land.

  “Farmers are quite worried about the whole thing,” Ken said. “In some parts of the mainland, foxes can take up to 30 percent of your lamb growth every year. That's just huge, that's money down the drain as far as the farmer's concerned.”

  “Have foxes killed any lambs around here?”

  “We've had a few lambs come in that have looked very fox-suspect. Farmers have called us, and we've gone out and had a look. We've seen lambs with their noses eaten off and their tongues eaten out, a typical fox kill. Sometimes they'll chew a little bit of ear, and that's all they'll eat off that one lamb. And they'll just keep doing it.

  “But it's not just the farmers,” he continued. “Anyone with feelings about wildlife conservation would be worried as well. If the foxes get established here, we'd probably lose every species under five kilos. There are so many native animals in that five-kilo-and-under range that you don't find anywhere else—not anywhere else in the world except Tasmania. Australia's got a terrible record for mammals becoming extinct in the last two hundred years. But in Tasmania, there's only one that's supposed to be gone—the Tasmanian tiger. Now we're looking at twelve, fifteen, twenty species that could go.”

  “Things aren't looking good for Mangy,” Alexis said.