VOICES: Andy Parkinson tells us why he, along with fellow award-winning photographers Neil Aldridge and Matt Maran, set out with their new book FOX: Neighbour Villain Icon to shed light on the truth about one of Britain’s best-known predators and dispel the myths that malign society’s attitudes towards these enigmatic animals.

It would be easy to assume that every wildlife photographer would be vegan. After all, we so-called ‘animal lovers’ spend inordinate amounts of our own lives immersed in the daily lives of the animals we claim to care so much about. We are privileged to witness the ferocious maternal aggression with which they defend their precious offspring, we get to recognise their individually distinct personalities, we are awed by the beauty of their courtship rituals and we bear witness every day to the vast range of complex emotions that they display.

Bizarrely, disappointingly, and maddeningly, this is far from the case and it appears that very few wildlife photographers have the courage, the congruence or the compassion to afford the same respect to domesticated animals that they do to their wild cousins. One needs only to pore through the bio of almost all wildlife photographer’s websites to see endlessly trite and predictable references to ‘doing the right thing’, ‘always putting the welfare of the subject first’, ‘never compromise an animal’s wellbeing’.

Yet that self-same photographer will then blithely return home, having spent all day marvelling and ‘respecting’ the astonishing beauty of nature, only to tuck into the decaying corpse of another living being who invariably suffered a violent and terrifying death. For what, the utter triviality of five minutes of sensory pleasure.

I’m glad to say that all three of the contributing photographers for this Fox book have the courage to align their beliefs with their actions. All three of us are passionately vegan, the editor is vegan, Chris Packham who wrote the foreword is vegan, our wonderful artist is vegan, and almost all of the contributing writers are vegan. Our book is a passionate, honest and reflective collaboration of our cumulative 30 years of experience with these environmentally essential apex predators, and our book seeks only to achieve one core aim - to give foxes a much-needed voice.

Why? Because no animal in the UK is, or ever has been, more dishonestly represented than the fox. No animal has more absurd myths routinely peddled about it, no other animal is so relentlessly pursued by the ignorant, the prejudiced and the psychopathic. If you look toward other advanced Western democracies like Canada, the US, Australia, we see a continuation of humanity’s perverse relationship with apex species, a contradiction made more absurd by our own evangelical love for the canids with which we share our homes. What a wolf, a coyote, a fox or a dingo would give to be treated with one per cent of the same respect and protection largely afforded to our dogs?

This book humbly strives to educate, inform and hopefully inspire. To push back against the tsunami of absurd Victorian prejudice, to harness 21st Century science with credible, peer-reviewed research undertaken over years by Europe’s leading fox experts.

In doing so we sought to expose the absurdity, the shameful litany of fraudulent deceits still used to justify the foxes’ ongoing persecution. ‘They kill for fun’, ‘they’re evil’, ‘they’re vermin’, ‘they attack babies’…and on, and on and on. The uncomfortable reality that we must collectively face in the UK is that a disturbing minority of extremely wealthy, powerful elites, often enabled and protected in their illegality by our own Police force, continue to push these lies solely to perpetuate their relentless persecution, effectively fetishizing their own grubby, perverted blood-lust.

Even our own democratically elected government remain complicit, with countless opportunities to strengthen the Hunting Act they prefer instead to turn a blind, cowardly eye and let the horrors go unpunished, unfolding secretly on the private estates of the landed gentry.

When faced with such a powerful, and often armed and aggressive opposition we have armed ourselves only with cameras. One of our photographic trio, Neil Aldridge, has for years worked alongside our heroic sabs, courageously documenting the daily violence to which they are routinely subjected, the Police so often standing impotently close by.

Matt Maran meanwhile has spent years documenting the lives of our urban foxes, and the invaluable service that they provide. This is not only in terms of clearing up due to the profligacy of people, but also in terms of managing rodent numbers, and dispersing seeds, not to mention the immeasurable mental health benefits of those countless people who enjoy genuine, life-affirming interactions in areas so often devoid of other animal life.

In every walk of life, knowledge is power and the more that we are able to confront the deceits, the more that we can educate and disseminate the science, so we collectively can start to show these animals for what they really are. They are loving and protective mothers, they are highly intelligent, incredibly resourceful, adaptable and environmentally essential icons of our countryside. They should be revered, they should be adored, they should be celebrated and most importantly they should be protected.

To learn more about red foxes, check out www.foxbook.shop. It is a beautifully illustrated hardcover book with over 100 photographs by award-winning photographers Neil Aldridge, Matt Maran and Andy Parkinson, with a foreword by Chris Packham.

Andy Parkinson is an award-winning photographer, Nikon Europe Ambassador and contributing photographer to National Geographic magazine.    

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