A Fed Fox is a Dead Fox

July 30 Written By Alyce Bender

As late as the 1970s, visitors to Yellowstone National Park were allowed to feed wildlife, including bears. Which means there is still a good-sized portion of the American population that has memories of doing just that or hearing how their parents or grandparents did that when they visited the park.

Three yearling grizzly bear cubs cross the road during a bear jam in Grand Teton National Park. Raised around the park’s roads and visitors, they have little fear of people at this time. Had they been born several decades ago, they most likely would have been walking up to the cars begging for handouts. As it is, many of these “front country raised” cubs end up being put down by wildlife service when, as two or three year olds they seek easier calorie sources from human development.

This is not an excuse, however! The parks have had established rules and regulations now for over fifty years, prohibiting the feeding of wildlife, especially bears and other predatory species. Yet each year, bears, foxes, elk, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and, to a lesser extent, marmots, ground squirrels, and chipmunks end up paying the price for taking the tempting high calorie offerings that irresponsible park visitors leave out for wildlife. These animals, habituated to humans and the food sources they present as, are then deemed a public safety issue or nuisance animal and are then “removed from service.” For predatory species this means death. For other species it could mean extensive harassment to try to scare them away from people or trapping and relocating them away from the front country, or it could also mean death for the animal or animals.

While this may seem like just a national park problem, it is an overarching problem as the human population grows and continues to build homes over more and more wildlife habitat. Some animals, such as foxes and coyotes, have adapted to more urbanized environments. However, bears will frequent the edges of towns and riffle through campgrounds hoping for an easy meal, especially female bears with cubs trying to stay out of the backcountry, where male bears more frequently kill their cubs, but who still need substantial calorie intake to support their growing family.

So, this is a broad issue that frequently finds wildlife photographers pulled in one direction or the other. Ethical wildlife photography does not include using human supplied food attractants to lure subjects into position for an image. But that is even an overreaching sentence as the topic is nuanced depending on species. While ethically and in many places legally, a photographer should not feed bears, foxes, or owls, when it comes to a wide variety of songbirds, hummingbirds, and smaller rodents, such as squirrels, the ethical lines blur all that much more, particularly in areas where it is not expressly illegal.

A male broadbill hummingbird sits on a nectar feeder at the Tucson Audubon’s Paton Center for Hummingbirds, where supplemental feeding is supported as well as the establishment and care of native food source plants and habitat. This center not only helps connect people with birds but also supplies a waystation for migrating hummingbirds to rest and feed during spring and fall migrations across the desert.

With that said, here are some guideline questions to help wildlife photographers think about where they fall on the ethical spectrum if deciding to photograph wildlife over a human supplied food source.

1)      Is the food source/bait only supplied to attract the wildlife for photography?

 If the answer is yes, then the subject must alter its behavior in order to take advantage of the attractant put out by the photographer. This impacts its natural routine and should be very carefully considered if a photo is worth potentially drawing the subject away from their usual territory and/or into a situation that makes it easier to be detected by predators.

 In other situations, human supplied food sources are provided regardless of the photographic opportunities as a way to help species, especially those that are threated or endangered, survive harsher conditions without actually maintaining the animals in captivity. This supplemental feeding has been used to help various species, from endangered red-crowned cranes in Japan to elk and bighorn sheep in the U.S.A., survive harsh winters and limit human-animal conflict where public and private lands abut each other. 

 2)      Does supplying a food source/bait habitualize the individuals to humans?

 If the answer is yes, avoid it. Wildlife needs to stay wild. In cases where owls are baited at roadsides, those owls are more prone to being killed or injured by vehicles as they start associating oncoming traffic as a potential food source. Same goes for other species like bears, foxes, wild horses, deer, and rodents. Over the last several years, there have been multiple headlines showcasing the detriment this type of habitualizing causes in wildlife-human conflict. A couple winters ago a well-known photographer was caught feeding a fox in Grand Teton National Park in order to capture a “better” image. The fox was killed afterwards as it continued to beg from visitors. Last year, a wild stallion on the Outer Banks (NC) was captured and put into captivity in Texas, after habitualization lead him to raid camp sites in order to provide for his family band.

An overweight California ground squirrel sits cleaning up crumbs on a rock next to a vista pullout, having just “scored” a few crackers in exchange for selfies with tourists. Ground squirrels in this area are known to run out into the road to “greet” vehicles in hopes they will get a treat. Not only does this cause higher mortality due to vehicles not stopping in time, but those that do receive junk food live shorter lives due to obesity.

1)      Does supplying a food source/bait increase the chances of partaking individuals becoming dependent on the source of food as a regular part of their caloric intake? (I.E., Will they forego their natural foods and hunting/foraging habits in order to procure the human supplied calories?)

 Many species can become habitulaized to human handouts. It is up to the photographer to have researched what scientific studies have said about the impact of human attractants to certain species. Typically, backyard subjects like songbirds and hummingbirds do not become dependent on seed and nectar feeders and have been shown to forage away from feeders when their natural food sources are present. In other species, such as raccoons, monkeys, bears, or alligators, habitual feeding can cause them to become desensitized to human presence and see humans as a source of food which in turn can cause serious safety issues for any humans that may cross their paths. This habituation can also cause the animals to forego their natural foods and seek out only human sourced foods, putting them in danger from a nutrition standpoint as well as creating a situation where, if the stream of food is cut off, the animal could starve.

 2)      Does the gathering of a species, or set of species, increase their chances of contracting disease or becoming wounded/injured due to increased competition over a high value food source/bait?  

 Again, if the answer is yes, it is best to avoid the practice. Studies have shown that raptors are more susceptible to avian flu. When baited piles of meat are used to lure in raptors, such as on many south Texas photography ranches, not only does this increase the potential for those birds to be injured as they fight each other over the high value food source, but it also increases the chances of spreading communicable diseases. This is one reason that even backyard bird feeders need to be cleaned on a very regular basis and that national organizations, such as Audubon, should be listened to when they issue suggestions of removing feeders for periods of time for the health and safety of birds in a particular area.

 Even pollinators, some of the smallest wildlife we encounter, are susceptible to issues when we try to supplement their food sources outside of their native plants. Tropical milkweed, a popular non-native milkweed plant for those trying to support monarch butterflies, has several issues with it, especially in temperate climates where it does not naturally die back in the fall. This plant, when it doesn’t die back, can contain higher levels of a protozoan parasite, Ophryocystis elektroscirrha or OE for short, which in turn is linked to lower migration success, as well as reduced life cycle and life span abilities in adult monarchs. To add to the issue, climate change is actually making these plants more toxic to the butterflies as well, meaning fewer monarch caterpillars that are hosted on tropical milkweed actually make it to adulthood.

 So, while there are places and times when supplemental feeding of wildlife can be acceptable, as responsible wildlife photographers, it serves us better to become better naturalists and understand the natural foods our target species require and learn where to find those when out in Nature. This way we can observe and photograph completely wild subjects in completely wild situations, rather than just inviting our subjects into a curated outdoor studio.   

“Psst! A fed fox is a dead fox.”