Camera Trap Finds: Sionnach, Fox

Restore Ballymacraven River Assocation (RBRA) have a camera trap set up along the Ballymacraven River, moving the location every couple of months. It is set up in discrete, remote locations. The aim of the camera is to help us monitor the river and document the wildlife along it.

In the most recent pick up there was great success, with a high number of images and videos captured of the fauna. Particularly it seemed to be right on a foxes trail.

Foxes, sionnach, are a positive sign for the Ballymacraven River. Foxes play a silent, yet important role for the health of our rivers. As an apex predator, they are a species at the top of the food chain, with no natural predators in its ecosystem.

🌳🐁🐇 Support the health of river banks: They manage the population of rodents, small mammals some of which are herbivores (rabbits), supporting in healthier vegetation and less erosion along river edges.

🐀 Specifically reduce rat numbers: This indirectly helps in a number of ways. Very importantly this protects ground nesting birds from rats taking their eggs. They reduce disease transmission that rats carry. It must be noted that foxes are also predators to ground nesting birds although these birds evolved with fox predation and did not evolve with farm-subsidised rat densities. There are multiple factors at play in this situation.

🍖🦴 Clean up: They are scavengers, so will consume carrion such as dead fish and animal carcasses along the river reducing disease and accelerates nutrient cycling within the land.

🫘🌱 Seed dispersal: They eat wild berries, the seeds pass through their digestive system and are deposited in nutrient-rich droppings in other words their poop known as scats. The animal tracks are often following along the river creating these linatc wildlife corridors (as seen in these videos). This supports the spread of native plants, helping with natural regeneration helping in the creation of “ecological highways” along the river systems.

If you would like to see more videos of the fox media captured in this location, check out our instagram restore_ballymacraven_river.