If you’ve been wondering what the young man driving around the district in a ute with a weird antennae thing on the back is up to these past few weeks, rest assured it’s all for a good cause.

 

Wildlife researcher Andrew Carter is tracking the movement of foxes so that fox baiting programs become more efficient.

 

“There has been a big push around Nathalia and indeed across the state to get farmers involved in fox baiting programs, however there is very little guidance as to where the best places to put the baits are,” says Andrew, a PhD student with Charles Sturt University’s Institute for Land, Water and Society.

 

Andrew is working together with local farmers on their properties to catch foxes using foothold traps.

 

Once caught, the foxes are sedated so that Andrew can attach a tracking collar. He then lets them go and follows their movements with the ute’s tracking tower. So far he has caught two foxes and is hoping to catch another eight to ten before August, and then a few more when the juvenile’s emerge towards the end of the year.

 

“With breeding approaching, the fox population throughout the district is at its lowest for the year, reduced further by a recently completed baiting program,” says Andrew. “But if I had started trapping earlier in the year I would have caught a lot of juvenile foxes which are more naïve and wouldn’t have had their own defined territory. It is the older, wily foxes who have established territories and set patterns of movement that I am after. But then they are the hardest to catch!”

 

Andrew has asked that if people do come across a fox with a collar that they refrain from shooting it unless of course it is causing livestock damage. If anyone comes across a dead fox with a collar there is a phone number on the collar that they are asked to call.

 

“Another baiting program in the Nathalia district is planned for autumn next year,” says Andrew. “It will be great if there are still a few collared foxes around then so we can place baits using the information I will get from tracking their movements and see if the foxes die.”

 

Andrew, who is staying out in a converted shearing shed while he is undertaking this work, is spending many a long, cold night travelling around the local roads following foxes.

 

“All of the farmers have been really great and helpful,” says Andrew who sometimes needs to go onto private property in pursuit of the foxes.

 

“Everyone knows that foxes are a big problem for native wildlife and livestock. Hopefully the information I get will make fox baiting programs more efficient and stream-lined. It’s a very practical application of science.”