A comparison of red fox Vulpes vulpes activity and gamebird diet on gamebird release sites and on nearby non‐release areas in southern England

Driven game shoots in the UK lowlands commonly release several thousand pheasants Phasianus colchicus and red‐legged partridges Alectoris rufa in late summer, which is likely to attract the attention of the main generalist predator, the red fox. Game managers try to protect their releases by culling foxes. The effect of this process of attracting and culling on the population dynamics of foxes in and around gamebird release areas is not fully understood. A widespread perception is that the release areas are ‘honey‐pots' for foxes with high levels of immigration and ineffective culling, which creates problems for other wildlife such as ground‐nesting birds. We accumulated data on fox activity by recording and collecting fox scats (n = 1491) on 18 sites in central southern England, some with and some without releasing, every three weeks for 1.6 years. Using a sub‐sample (422 scats) we examined for the presence of gamebirds in the diet through metabarcoding analysis. Fox activity was similar or sometimes lower on ten gamebird release sites throughout the year (0.58 ± 0.05 scats km ‐1 overall) compared to the eight non‐release sites (1.5 ± 0.17 scats km ‐1 ), including after release, even though gamebirds were up to 50 times more common and formed two or three times (depending on season) greater part of the diet of foxes on those sites. Using scat surveys to estimate fox activity is a crude measure and may be biased with treatment and this is discussed. Otherwise while our results challenge the idea that releasing routinely leads to increased fox activity on release sites, other factors are potentially involved and are discussed. We suggest that, while foxes might be attracted to release sites, culling by gamekeepers can be an effective reduction strategy and, also, released gamebirds may stray onto, and hence attract foxes and increase their activity in surrounding areas.