Are Foxes Widespread And Established In Tasmania?

Advance Summary

1. A recent refereed paper claims that foxes are widespread and established in Tasmania and likely to become increasingly so.

2. This paper uncritically accepts some data items that, while not discredited entirely, are in some cases very dubious.

3. This raises concerns about whether the authors are familiar enough with all the data they use to be very confident that most of the data items are valid.

4. Similar concerns relate to the continued presentation of some dubious fox data items as hard evidence by the Tasmanian government.

5. On this basis, both scientists publishing on the question of foxes, and the Tasmanian government, need to present data accurately and with reservations properly discussed and explored if their claims about foxes are to be considered credible.

6. At present neither the claims that foxes are widespread in the state, nor the claims by some "sceptics" of a conspiracy to import fox evidence in order to fabricate fox presence, are convincing.