Should Foxes At Island Beach State Park Be Killed To Protect Birds?

Officials at Island Beach State Park are denying that they are protecting birds by killing foxes in the park.

After video was posted by Real Brigantine showing dead foxes (the video is graphic, be warned), outrage spread quickly across social media.

The issue has boiled down to the state Department of Environmental Protection admitting that the trapping and euthanization of foxes by gunshot in the North Brigantine State Natural Area had been standard practice for decades by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but the cases in the video seem to indicate that a non-sanctioned person (or persons) is poisoning the foxes.

Red foxes at Island Beach State Park are not being trapped like their kind in Brigantine, however.

The debate is actually taking on two different threads - the first about how to humanely eliminate the foxes, and the second about whether they should be culled at all.

I think it's odd that officials from IBSP don't feel the need to protect the piping plover from foxes, while those at Brigantine do. Without sounding too tree-huggerish, I don't think any animal should be killed to protect another animal. If the fox is a natural predator to the plover, so be it. Circle of life, man.

What do you think about this whole controversy?

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