Foxes trapped, killed to save plovers

Trappers euthanized nine foxes last week after catching them in Robert Moses State Park, a breeding ground for the threatened piping plover.

Wildlife officials blamed the foxes trapped near Democrat Point for a precipitous drop in the number of nesting plover pairs in the park, said Ronald Foley, Long Island regional director of the state parks department.

In 2009, he said, 24 pairs of piping plovers were in the park; in 2010 there were 11, and last year there were 12. Thirteen, four and 16 chicks grew to maturity in those years, respectively.

During the same period, the fox population appears to have surged, though there has been no official count, Foley said.

The evidence against them is abundant but circumstantial: officials have spotted plover carcasses near fox tracks in the isolated area at the far western end of the park, Foley said, and motion-activated cameras have shown foxes near plover nests at Jones Beach, about 21 miles away. "I've seen pictures of foxes at night looking right at the camera," he said.

About a quarter of the 800 pair of plovers on the Atlantic coast use Long Island's sandy beaches for breeding and nesting, arriving in early April. The birds nest through the spring and summer and retreat to their wintering areas by early September.

Unlike plovers, foxes are not a protected species under federal and state law. "They're common on Long Island," Foley said.

Padded "leg-hold" traps were used to catch the foxes, Foley said. He did not know how they were killed. He added that other protective measures are already in place, such as wire mesh nest "exclosures" to keep predators away from plover nests. The nests are closely monitored, and if human visitors -- mostly fishermen and off-road vehicle drivers -- disturb the population, the beach is closed.

Simply trapping and moving the foxes isn't a solution, wildlife officials and advocates agree. "That's just moving the problem somewhere else," Foley said.

Advocacy groups are divided on the use of traps -- and euthanasia. In a position paper on the issue, the Wildlife Society describes government-regulated trapping as "versatile, safe, effective and ecologically sound" and a primary tool of most wildlife management programs.

But Monica Engebretson, a senior program associate with Born Free USA, a group that generally opposes trapping, warned that the practice has complicated -- and sometimes unpredictable -- consequences.

"Anytime you kill a native species, it has an impact," she said. Other animal populations could be affected, she said, and more foxes could breed to fill the niche opened by those who are killed, leaving wildlife officials with the uncomfortable task of regular fox killing.

"I do recognize the dilemma," Foley said. "There's a balance all the time, and we're expected to maintain that balance." But when the very existence of a species is at stake, he said, "the balance has to be in favor of that species."