Integrated fox control

Established Invasive Animals Best Practice Management video series

1. Fox Control in Victoria

Hi, I'm Lucy Reiger from the Established Invasive Animals Team here at Agriculture Victoria. Foxes are a highly destructive invasive species and pose a significant threat to livestock and native wildlife. This video will give an overview of foxes as an invasive species and explores common control methods landowners can use to help manage populations.

The European Red Fox was introduced to Australia in the mid 1800s for hunting purposes. However, populations quickly spread across the country closely following that of rabbits. Today, foxes are found throughout all states and territories except Tasmania.

Foxes breed once per year, commencing around June and July. Males mature at nine to ten months of age, and 85% of females breed in their first year. Foxes generally have three to five cubs per litter, which are typically born between August and September. Foxes also have relatively large home ranges and can travel up to 10 to 15 kilometres per night in search for food and don't always return to the same den.

Foxes are opportunistic predators and will eat a wide variety of foods, including small to medium size mammals, rodents, as well as carrion. Foxes are highly adaptive and can be found in both regional and urban areas with their highest densities being found where resources are most abundant. Foxes have a devastating impact on native wildlife across Australia, currently threatening 14 species of bird, 48 mammal species and 12 reptile species. In fact, almost any animal up to 5.5 kilograms in weight is at risk of fox predation.

The economic impact of foxes is estimated to be $227.5 million per year. Foxes are also a potential biosecurity risk and may be implicated in the spread of diseases such as rabies if it were to ever enter the country.

The first step to managing foxes on your property is to identify fox activity. Key signs of fox activity include tracks, dung or scats, fox dens, as well as animal carcasses or bite marks. The best thing to do is familiarise yourself with these key signs and to look out when monitoring your property.

Once you've identified fox activity, there's a range of control methods you can use to help manage their populations. The most common control method is baiting, which involves laying poison bait designed to target foxes. Other control methods available include Canid Pest Ejectors, as well as ground shooting, trapping, and fencing. It's important to note that none of these standalone techniques are a hundred percent effective on their own, which is why an integrated approach is most effective for managing foxes. We'll provide more information about each control method in other videos as part of this series.

Foxes are a widespread invasive species that threatens agriculture, the livestock industry, and the environment. It's important to select suitable control techniques for your property and business and to implement these in a strategic manner. You can find more information on the Agriculture Victoria website. Enjoy the series, we hope you found this helpful, and thanks for playing your part in managing Victoria's invasive pest animals.

Established Invasive Animals Best Practice Management video series

02. Monitoring pest animals in Victoria - make it part of your plan

Hi, I'm Jason Wishart. Biosecurity manager with the Established Invasive Animals Team at Agriculture Victoria. In this video, we're going to look at monitoring and why it should be included in your integrated pest management program. Monitoring is often overlooked in pest management programs because it's often seen as a waste of time and money, but this couldn't be further from the truth. Monitoring helps to measure pest damage and abundance, identify hotspots or high use areas in the landscape, confirm if non-target species are present, select the right control tools, ensure your program is having the intended impact, and it allows you to make changes to improve your program.

Two types of monitoring are used to monitor pest management programs, including performance monitoring and operations monitoring. Performance monitoring looks at the impact of your pest management program on the pest animals and their damage. While operations monitoring focuses on the efficiency of your program to ensure that the cost don't outweigh the benefits.

Monitoring can be time consuming, so it's important to be clear about what you want to monitor, when it should be monitored, and how often to confirm you are meeting the project objectives. A range of performance monitoring techniques can be used to monitor pest animals and their damage. They include camera trapping, spot lighting and thermal imagery, activity plots. And you may also record lambing rates or crop yields or look at the response of threatened species populations to your program. No matter what technique you choose, it must be undertaken consistently in terms of site, location, duration, equipment, and personnel. So the results are comparable. Now I'm going to briefly discuss each of the more common monitoring techniques used to measure performance.

In this part of the video, I'm going to run through some of the basics for using activity plots to monitor pest animal populations. So I've got one set out here. Essentially what you need to do is make sure that your plot covers the entire road so that the fox or wild dog can't step around your plot. They've got to actually walk through it. The other thing you need to do is make sure that the plot itself is wide enough, so they don't just jump over. It also needs to be at least a metre in width. And then also you need to set these up at a number of different locations along the property and quite clearly throughout the property so that you get a good representation of fox abundance. Because if you only do one or two plots, it's not really going to give you a good indication. So yeah, making sure that they're at regular intervals and there's enough to cover your property to get good numbers. And then the other thing that's important to do as well is to run it over several nights because on one night there might be a high level of activity that's unusual for some reason, or there might be low levels. So if you've done it over three nights, you can get that average and use that. And then after your control program, you can measure again and compare the same with the same. So it's got to be comparable, making sure that you've done everything in the same way and using the same number of nights and those sorts of things. So when you've set your plot, so this is when you've, you're just setting up, you've, you've created your plot. You make sure that the sand here is all nice and soft. So we've already pre-done one here, but what you can also use is a, is a bag of sand too. If the, if the roads are really hard or the surface that you're working on is really hard, then a, a fox print or a dog print, it won't show up. So you can add some sand to that mix or you can use your rake or a shovel and just really give it a roughing up. So it's nice and soft like you can see here. This is, is really sort of powdery now. So yeah, you set your plots up next morning, come back and have a look and, and record what you've found. And for most animal control programs, presence/absence is really all you need. So the number of plots with fox activity is sufficient. So that's, that's really basically what you have there for activity plot monitoring.

In this part of the video, I'm going to talk about how remote cameras can be used to monitor pest animal populations or even how they can be used to monitor control tools. Now there are a number of different cameras on the market. Some can take video and some can take still, it just depends on the situation and what you're hoping to achieve as to which one you might choose in those situations. There are also a number of different types of camera sets that you can use. So you can use a passive set, which essentially tries to capture the animal in the landscape doing its natural thing. So they're just passively moving through the landscape. And that's generally used to get a count on population. The other thing you can do is use an active set and that's where you'd use an actual lure to bring an animal to a particular area and count them that way. And sometimes that would even be considered, well, what you would use for doing baiting and, and things like that too. Okay, so once you've found the place that you'd like to actually place your camera in the landscape, the next thing you got to think about is probably the, the camera settings and the height of the camera and the distance from, from the actual target as well. So I've got a camera here. It's one of the ones where you use quite regularly. If you are most, most likely you, you're going to be monitoring things like pigs or foxes with, with remote cameras smaller animals often a little bit more difficult to detect. So it's really important that you have them at the, at the right height. So it's essentially a camera detects the heat in movement. So you want to be able to put the camera at the same height as the centre of mass. So with a pig, it's about sort of waist, waist height, a little bit lower than waist height. And you just put it into the post at about there. And you also want to put that camera facing at about 25 degrees to the trail that you think the animal be will be walking down. If you face it at right angles, the animal will be passed before the camera triggers and takes the photo. So it's really important that you sort of angle it along that trail and make sure it, it sort of captures images as the animal walks up and along and, and past. So a little bit different if you're going to be monitoring your bait station or something like that. If it's a bait station, same thing about the height. Really important to have the height right, but the distance from the bait station might be a bit different. So for pigs for example, you might put your camera about, say, five metres away because you want to maximise that field of view and make sure that you get all the animals in the shot. The other thing are the settings on the camera itself, when you're monitoring in the landscape and having animals pass through quickly, you might have your camera set really high sensitivity. So it takes a photo quite quickly and you might take a number of shots during each trigger as well. But one thing that's really important is that no matter what sort of setup and settings that you have, they remain the same for your entire monitoring program. Because if you change the settings, you might get a different detection rate or whatever and it might give you a false reading on population declines or increases. So make sure that that's exactly the same. So if you've set it one way before you're monitoring or before your control program, make sure that they're set the same way afterwards and that you use the same locations and that you monitor for the same length of time as well. So often it's a really good idea to not just to monitor for one night or two nights, but monitor for a length of time and get an average per night per camera. That way you're results will be a lot more accurate as well. And those declines will act be actual declines and not maybe a false reading. So once you've collected your data, the next thing you need to do is, is actually analyse it. And the best way to do that in most situations, particularly for the passive monitoring where you, where getting animals moving through the landscape is to look at the number of passes per animal, per camera, per night. And you average that out over the monitoring period. That's probably the most effective way for analysing camera data. There are other ways too but for monitoring, for a pest control program that's probably the best one to use. The other thing you could potentially do if you're actually looking at visitation rate towards a feral pig bait station, for example, you might then count the number of visits rather than passes. But no matter what it is, always use the same, always analyse it the same way. Consistency is really the key for monitoring so that you're actually comparing apples with apples.

In this part of the video, I'm going to go through some of the basics for spotlight monitoring, and that's really to get an idea of the pest abundance or pest activity on your land before you do control and after you do control. So there are a few things that you got to think about with spotlighting. One thing is probably the target animal. So spotlighting works really well, I guess for rabbits and foxes and to a lesser extent, feral pigs, their eye shine's not so great and you want to have transects predetermined transects as well that you'll monitor on a regular basis. So you'll use the same transect each time. So a transect really is just a path through your property and you want to make sure that that covers a good representation of what your property actually is. So if you've got a bit of bush land and a bit of open grassland and everything else, you want to make sure that that trail that you're going to spotlight covers all of that. Another thing that you need to do is make sure that the time of the night that you do your spotlighting is consistent. The people that you used to do the spotlighting is consistent. And also the actual methodology for spotlighting is consistent. So generally you travel at a certain speed throughout your transects and you do this nice steady arc and you're looking for eye shine. So eye shine from rabbits or eye shine from foxes. To do all this though, you're going to need some equipment and that again will depend on the size of the property that you're choosing or wanting to spotlight or do your monitoring. So if it's a larger property, you might use an actual spotlight, like these are quite powerful and can shine it at a certain distance or a large distance, and you can also use them out of a vehicle. And we've got one here that we use regularly for our rabbit monitoring and it's got a purpose built spotlight cage on the back for safety purposes. The other thing you might use if your property's a little bit smaller is just simply using a torch. You want a fairly high powered torch. And again, so you know if you are using your vehicle, you travelling along at a certain distance, same when you're on foot. You travel long at that certain distance. So it wants to be nice and steady and comparable. So after you finish spotlighting the data that you want to analyse is the number of animals seen or the number of individuals seen per spotlight kilometre. So for rabbits, it'll be the number of rabbits that you saw over a spotlight kilometre and you want to compare that information, your before information to your after information, and hopefully see whether there's been a percentage knockdown. And that's basically it for spotlight monitoring.

The type of monitoring technique used will depend on the target animal, the location, and the equipment and resources available. You should also conduct monitoring over several nights during each monitoring period to allow you to calculate an average as your results will be more accurate this way. Most operations monitoring is achieved by recording the costs associated with the control program in terms of time, resources, and equipment. You may also look at the number of animals removed per technique to determine its cost effectiveness. Once you've completed your monitoring, it's also important to analyse the data. For most pest control programs data analysis does not need to be complicated. Remember, you're only trying to confirm that your management program is having their desired impact on the pest animals and their damage, and that the costs aren't outweighing the benefits. So as previously mentioned, you might calculate the average number of passes per species, per camera per night if using camera monitoring, the average number of individuals per spotlight kilometre, if using spotlighting or the average number of plots containing activity per collection period if using activity plots. Monitoring is essential for any pest management program, as it allows you to confirm if your program is meeting the objectives. And if it's not, it enables you to make changes to improve it. It also helps to avoid any non-target impacts. For further information on monitoring and control methods, please watch the other videos in this series, refer to the Agricultural Victoria website or call the Customer Service Centre. Thanks for watching.

Established Invasive Animals Best Practice Management video series

2. Baiting foxes in Victoria

Hi, I'm Jason Wishart, Biosecurity Manager with the Established Invasive Animals Team at Agriculture Victoria. In this video we are going to take a look at fox baiting. Baiting is a cost-effective way to manage fox populations over large areas. It is considered a primary management technique and should be used as part of an integrated program.

Two toxins can be used to manage foxes in Victoria, including 1080 and PAPP. 1080 is derived from a naturally occurring compound found in some native Australian plant species. As a result, some native wildlife species have built a tolerance to 1080, unlike introduced pests that are highly susceptible. Nevertheless, it's important to avoid baiting where non-target species may be at risk, and to also bury fox baits during your baiting program to reduce access for non-target species. 1080 can be used as fresh or shelf stable baits. PAPP or para-amino propiophenone is a relatively new toxin for baiting foxes in Australia. Carnivores such as foxes, dogs and cats are particularly sensitive to PAPP, but it can also be toxic to a range of other species. So as with 1080, it's important to avoid baiting when non-target species may be at risk and to bury fox baits during baiting to reduce non-target species access. PAPP can only be used in shelf-stable baits.

Landholders must adhere to a number of legal requirements when using PAPP and 1080 bait products. First, they must possess a 1080 and PAPP endorsed Agricultural Chemical Users Permit. And then all usage notification, transportation, storage and disposal must be carried out in accordance with the product label, the directions for use of 1080 and PAPP bait products in Victoria and any other relevant state legislation.

It's important to monitor your property before undertaking your baiting program. Monitoring helps to identify where foxes are currently active and it can be used to measure the effectiveness of your program at a later date. During monitoring, you can actively search for signs of foxes, including tracks, dung, dens and fresh kills. You may also choose to use remote cameras to confirm fox presence near water holes, fence crossings, or along trails. In the next part of the video, I'll demonstrate how to bait foxes.

Now the first thing you got to do when, when doing a fox baiting program is to think about the timing. So, you want to put baits in the landscape when foxes are more likely to eat them. So that's when alternate feeds are scarce. It can also be when younger foxes are dispersing from their original home range after the breeding season around Autumn. The other thing you can think about during timing is you know when it's less likely to impact perhaps a native or or non-target species. So you can avoid those times of the year and also when you can time it with your neighbours.

So the next thing you want to think about is bait placement. And with bait placement you really just want to put it where the foxes are most likely to find it and also to cover your property as well as you possibly can.

So along fence lines like we've got here, so this is an internal fence. Foxes will often travel along, hit the internal fence and walk along the fence for a period of time. They also like to walk along vehicle tracks and those sorts of things. They could be closer to water points where their prey are often more abundant. So, it's really important to target those areas. So, you can either place them at hotspots or the other way to do it is to place them at set intervals along tracks, but there are regulations around the distances for these intervals. So, it's really important to pay attention to the directions for use and also the label instructions.

So now I'm just going to run through some of the equipment that you'll need when laying a fox bait. First, you'll need your shovel, which is used to create your plot. So that's just basically a one by one metre square that you'll place your bait in the centre of. And that plot will do two things. It'll attract the fox to the site in the first place or help to and then you can also monitor for tracks of foxes and also non-target species. Then you can use your mattock to put the bait in the centre of the plot or dig your bait in the plot. You will then use your, whenever handling the baits, you've got your safety equipment, so your PVC gloves in this instance. Marking tape to mark your bait station as well. You can also use a GPS. You can also use a remote camera. So to set that up fairly close to the bait station to keep an eye on the bait station to see what's visiting. And then you'll have the baits themselves. So for foxes, you can either use perishable baits or shelf stable baits. So, we've got some shelf stable baits here. You have got a sausage style bait, a meat meal style bait, and also a dried meat bait. And you can also use for foxes in Victoria 1080 and PAPP.

Okay, now we're going to lay the fox bait. So firstly, I'll clear my plot. So, you just want to smooth this off a little bit. Make sure the dirt is nice and soft so that tracks will be seen if any fox or non-target animal comes along. So that's essentially that. The next thing you want to do is to dig the hole in the middle. Now it's really important to bury the baits to a certain depth as part of the label and also as part of the directions for use. So that's about 10 centimetres. Now burying the bait helps to reduce the non-target risk as well. Foxes will definitely smell it and come along and dig it up, whereas non-target animals are less likely to do that. So there we have the hole that's been dug and now I'll add the bait to that. So putting the gloves on. As always, when handling any baits, place the bait in the centre of the hole, cover that over, make sure it's nice and smooth. And that's essentially it there. So after that you might put your flagging tape on the fence. You might also put up a camera as well to monitor that bait station to see what comes in overnight. And next, really you've just got to think about checking the baits each day during your program every morning to replace any baits that might have been eaten so that there are more baits there available for the next fox that comes along. And, and also at the end of the program as well, you've got to think about cleanup. So disposing of any uneaten bait material and of any fox carcasses that you might find.

Baiting is cost effective for managing foxes over large areas. As always, it should be undertaken with other control techniques as part of an integrated management program. Baiting should also be undertaken with your neighbours to cover a larger area as possible and slow population recovery. For further information on baiting, visit the Agriculture Victoria website or call the Customer Service Centre. Please also watch the other videos in this series to learn about the other control techniques used for foxes. Thank you.

Established Invasive Animals Best Practice Management video series

3. Fox control in Victoria - canid pest ejectors

Hi, I'm Jason Wishart. Biosecurity Manager with the Established Invasive Animals team at Agriculture Victoria. In this video we'll take a look at Canid Pest Ejectors and how they can be used to manage foxes on your land. Canid Pest Ejectors, and baiting, which are covered in another video, are considered as primary fox management techniques and should be used with other suitable techniques as part of an integrated fox management program. Canid Pest Ejectors are a spring activated device used to deploy toxin directly into the mouths of foxes and wild dogs that are activated when a fox or wild dog pulls firmly on the lure head. Canid Pest Ejectors can be effective at preventing harm to non-target species as they are specifically designed to target foxes and wild dogs. You can either use 1080 or PAPP toxic capsules in CPEs and the capsules themselves are weatherproof, which prevents degradation. CPEs also prevent caching, which sometimes happens with traditional baiting.

There are a number of legal requirements that landholders must adhere to when using CPEs. First, you must possess a 1080 and PAPP endorsed Agricultural Chemical Users Permit to buy and use Canid Pest Ejectors. Any usage notification, transport, storage and disposal must also be carried out in accordance with the label, the directions for use of 1080 and PAPP bait products in Victoria and any other relevant state legislation.

Okay, in this part of the video, I'm going to demonstrate how to set a Canid pest ejector. So the first thing you're going to do when you are implementing a Canid Pest Ejector program is think about the timing. So you want to place them out in the landscape when foxes are more likely to find it and actually pull on the lure head. So best to do it when alternate feed is scarce. Another time is when maybe younger foxes are dispersing from their initial home ranges, sort of after the breeding season. And with Canid Pest Ejectors as well, it's also good to sometimes run a program in between your ground baiting programs to pick up any foxes that may move in from outside areas.

Okay, the next thing you want to think about is site selection. So whereabouts in the landscape that you want to place a Canid Pest Ejector, and you want to do that where foxes are likely to find it. So anywhere where foxes frequent an area, for whatever reason, so it could be near a dam or somewhere where their prey items are abundant. Could be along a game trail, could be along fence lines could be near den sites and those sorts of things. The other thing you want to be a little bit careful of or be careful of is, is potential non-target species in the area. So, if there's a high sign of non-arts, you may not want to put your Canid Pest Ejector there. So, in this particular instance, we've chosen this spot near this old hollow log that foxes would camp in throughout the day. There's also a fair bit of sign as well that they've been here, so bits of rabbit bone and that sort of thing, and some scats too. So that's why we've selected this spot.

Okay, now I'm going to run through some of the equipment that you'll need to set your Canid Pest Ejector. First, you'll need your shovel to clear a plot. So, you want to create about a one by one metre squared plot. Essentially that'll attract the foxes into the location, but you can also monitor footprints, and everything left by foxes and non-target species. And your Canid Pest Ejector will sit directly in the middle of that plot. So then you'll need your hammer to hammer the Canid Pest Ejector into the ground, a driving rod, which will slip into the stake for the Canid Pest Ejector. Now it's really important that you use the driving rod to hammer the stake into the ground, or you'll damage the actual stake itself if you just hammer the stake directly. So, using that. The next bit is the firing mechanism or the ejector unit itself. The lure head, which attracts the foxes to the site in the first place. The setting pliers. Your safety equipment, so PVC gloves and goggles as well. When using handling the life unit with 1080, you'll, these are the equipment that you'll need, but when you're using PAPP, you'll also need cotton overalls buttoned to the neck and to the wrist. I'll just show you the capsule as well and what that looks like. But when doing that, the capsules is the part or the piece that holds the toxin. So, I'll use my gloves for that. So these are the little capsules that you'll use and that contains, like I said before, either 1080 or PAPP. And then your marking tape for marking the location. You might also use a GPS as well or something like that. And your remote camera, if you've got one, really great to put those on your Canid Pest Ejector to monitor what comes in and what might pull on the lure head. So that's all the equipment that you'll need. And the next bit I'll actually set the Canid Pest Ejector.

Okay, so now I'm going to set the Canid Pest Ejector. So, the first thing you want to do is create your plot about one by one metre squared. So scrape it off a bit. So I'm just going to loosen that soil a bit too, just so it's easy to see any footprints. Okay, so now that's all clear. I'll put the Canid Pest Ejector in the centre of this plot. So the first bit is to put the stake into the ground with your driving rod and your hammer. As mentioned earlier, it's really important to use the driving rod or you'll damage the stake. Now you don't want to hammer that all the way into the ground. You want to leave about a centimetre or so just protruding so that you've got the locking mechanism there or the locking ring and a little groove in the side of the stake that you slot the, the ejector into. That needs to be just sitting above the ground a bit. So I'll just go a little bit more. So that's about it there, just like that. Then we'll move on to the firing mechanism or the ejector mechanism and setting that. So really what you do here is use setting pliers and compress the piston and just wiggle that trigger a bit until it's at about 90 degrees and that there is set and loaded. Then set that to the side and next we're going to be handling the, the toxin. So we want to wear our safety gear. So I'll put my goggles on first and then my gloves, PVC gloves. So next you get your lure head and toxin capsule, and that just goes in the centre of the lure head and it can only go one way. So if it doesn't work just turn it around and try the other way. And that should drop directly into the middle of that lure head like that. And then you screw that onto the ejector mechanism. So it's really important when doing this because it'll be loaded then that you've got your safety gear on. But also that the ejector device itself is downwind so that if it accidentally fires any of the contents from the capsule will blow away from you and also just to point it in a safe direction as well. So you screw that on just finger tight like so. And then that just slots into the stake that you've put into the ground before. So this is an important bit. So you want to put your head down low onto the side, and again, the wind is blowing that way. So if it accidentally fires, it's going to go away from me. The trigger here goes into that little slot there on the steak, and then that locking ring goes above the trigger. If it goes below the trigger, the ejector unit can just be pulled out like that. So it must go above that trigger. So then when a fox pulls at that certain pull force it will fire directly into its mouth. So we'll lock that in position. You can see there that locking ring is above the the trigger and that is essentially ready to go. So now that that's all set up we can then put our marking tape up on the log here behind us or wherever. So you can easily find your stake and you can set up your remote camera.

The next thing you want to do is, is check it on a relatively regular basis. So every few days you'd come out and check it. And that's to see if any of the capsules or any of the the lure heads have been pulled. Or if you need to replace any spent capsules. You may even need to replace the lure head from time to time because occasionally they do degrade a little bit in the weather and become less attractive to foxes. So you might want to freshen those up. And then at the end of the program as well, you want to collect all spent and unspent capsules and dispose of them and dispose of any fox carcasses that you might find. And remember, as always, any disposal usage, notification to neighbours, transportation, storage, those sorts of things, they must all be done in accordance with the product label. And also with the directions for use of 1080 and PAPP bait products in Victoria.

Canid Pest Ejectors are an effective method for managing fox populations on your property. As always, Canid Pest Ejectors should be used with other techniques as part of an integrated approach. We hope you found this video on Canid Pest Ejectors helpful and please view the other videos in the series for further information on fox management. Thank you.

Established Invasive Animals Best Practice Management video series

4. Supplementary fox control options in Victoria

Hi, I'm Nigel Roberts. Leading Biosecurity Officer with the Established Invasive Animals team at Agriculture Victoria. In this video, I'll be talking to you about a range of management techniques other than baiting that can be used to help manage foxes on your property. The following techniques are not effective at achieving long term fox control when used on their own. However, it is worth considering these techniques to complement baiting and Canid Pest Ejectors as part of an integrated program to achieve better results. Please view the other videos in this series. For more information about baiting and Canid Pest Ejectors. Always consider your situation and what technique or combination of techniques is best suited to your property.

Shooting is an option that landholders often use for managing foxes on their properties. One advantage of shooting is that it's target specific, which reduces the chances of harm to off-target animals. And if done correctly, it is a humane control technique. Various forms of shooting used for foxes include spotlighting or use of thermal scopes, fox drives and fox whistling. Spotlighting, the use of thermal scopes, and fox whistling in late summer and early autumn are good times to target young foxes emerging from the dens after the breeding seasons. If you are conducting shooting on your property, you must adhere to all safety and legal requirements. Shooting should be undertaken humanely in accordance with the Prevention Of Cruelty To Animals Act. Shooting can be in labour intensive and time intensive, and rarely achieves long term population reductions. Foxes also become harder to shoot as they become wary, reducing the effectiveness of the technique and giving the shooter a false sense of success. As with all techniques in this video, please consider shooting as a secondary option or complEmentary to baiting and Canid Pest Ejectors.

Fumigation is another option available for landholders and is best suited to localised fox problems such as dens located near lambing paddocks or poultry. Fumigation uses carbon monoxide gas admitted from a flare and applied to a sealed fox den. Before conducting fumigation, it's important to make sure that foxes are using the den and not native animals. You can do this by looking for scats, tracks, and remains of prey items. It's important to properly seal the den and any escape holes only using soil when fumigating the den. This helps create a tight seal that stops gas from escaping. Fumigation should take place between August and October when vixens and cubs are using the den. Deep ripping can also be used to destroy the dens afterwards to ensure that they cannot be used by other foxes. If you don't have access to machinery, monitor the den after fumigation for further signs of fox activity and treat again.

Cage trapping and foothold trapping are other options available to landholders. However, it is time consuming and labour intensive. Trapping may be used for the removal of nuisance animals, but generally not as a long term fox control method. Cage traps are preferred over foothold traps as they are less likely to cause harm to the animal and off-target species can easily be released. There is strict legislation around the trap use, which includes the type and size of trap, how often you must check them, and the locations that they can be used. So please make sure you check and understand the Prevention Of Cruelty to Animals Act for rules on trapping.

Fences may be used to exclude foxes from high value assets such as endangered species habitat. However, foxes are very agile animals capable of passing through, digging under, jumping over, or even climbing various types of fences. As a result, fences must be of the highest standard and must be regularly maintained, or foxes are likely to breach the fence, requiring lethal options inside the fenced areas.

The techniques described in this video should be used to support the primary control techniques of baiting and Canid Pest Ejectors. We have standalone videos in this series on both of those techniques. Shooting, fumigation, and trapping may be able to target foxes not controlled through baiting or Canid Pest Ejectors. Thanks for watching, and please visit the Agriculture Victoria website or call our Customer Service Centre for more information. Thank you for helping to manage pests in your area and we hope you've found these videos helpful.