I LIVE in the Coombe Dingle area of Bristol and my wife and I enjoy watching the antics of the local urban foxes as they visit our garden on these lovely summer evenings.

But this year, at least one adult and one very young, perhaps a few weeks old, fox have prominent tags, the adult a collar and the vixen two painful looking tags on the ears.

What I find annoying about this is that there is no attempt to communicate to the local community that such tagging is taking place, its purpose, how information from such tags is gathered, and whether it is available to the general public.

These foxes are ours. So please – whatever research organisation is doing this, try to understand that we may like our foxes natural and untampered with, and, at the very least, we might like to know what is going on.

There must be quite a bit of clandestine activity going on, on our doorsteps, involving setting traps etc, and whoever is doing this is acting in an arrogant way, as they do not consider that the local population need to know anything about it.

I wonder how many small dogs or cats have been caught in these traps? I would also like to know how information from these tags is collected – if by radio signals, can we be sure those few days old vixens are not being distressed or even subject to brain damage?

Come on you researchers/scientists – keep the local population informed. Wildlife is ours too.

Richard Hensey,

Coombe Dingle.