At 09:25 PM 5/10/99 -0500, Eugene Kridler wrote:

>If it takes some of the l00 million house cats in this nation that kill
>an estimated 1 1/2 -2 billion birds , some estimates run to 3 billion,
>annually, more power to it.

I've never paid much attention to red foxes until spending time
around and near the Bear River National Duck Farm, oops, Migratory
Bird Refuge.

It's a wonderful place. The refuge itself tolerates foxes, and
is managed actually for more then duck farming despite my snide
comment. BUT ... it's surrounded by genuine duck farms, known
as "duck hunting clubs".

It's a weird scenario, where the duck clubs kill foxes on their
lands (and graze lots of cows and cattle egrets post-nesting,
to where the ground's pretty much feedlot-barren). It's a weird
form of paratisism, in my mind. Without the overall wetland
management activities of the Refuge, there would be no duck
clubs managing for feed supplementing, etc, for migrants as
well as some wetlands for nesting. Yet, they just sublet
everything to farmers with no notion of controlling fox
predation by landscape management techniques. They just
kill foxes, in great numbers. They farm ducks, for slaughter
by club members (I'm not anti-hunting, but I get very suspicious
of these kinds of arrangements). Carried on the backs of the
taxpayer that finances most of the real breeding habitat, while
the waterfowl of course feed where they can be shot.



- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
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