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After the loss of a beloved St. John\u2019s animal, the head of a volunteer animal rescue group is reminding people that \u201ca fed fox is a dead fox.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the iconic Signal Hill foxes was found dead on the side of the road near the national historic sight Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
Although Rock Wildlife Rescue director Karen Gosse is not surprised, she believes its death could have been prevented.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn’t a matter of if it would happen, it was a matter of when it was going to happen,\u201d she told CBC Radio\u2019s On The Go.<\/p>\n
The wildlife rescuer said she\u2019s noticed a trend of people feeding the foxes over the past few years. Because they live on Signal Hill, they see visitors quite often.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s become such a frequent occurrence that signs are now on the site, urging people not to feed nearby wild animals.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to understand that that’s\u2026 not healthy for them, it’s not healthy for us,\u201d said Gosse.<\/p>\n
Unhealthy habits<\/p>\n
Gosse said feeding the foxes creates an unnatural dependence on humans. It can lead to fox pups being unable to hunt on their own because they expect food to be handed to them.<\/p>\n
Human interference also lures foxes to high-traffic areas, such as the busy parking lot of a popular tourist destination like Signal Hill.<\/p>\n
Gosse is fairly certain this particular fox was hit and killed by a car.<\/p>\n
Even though the foxes are a beautiful part of a Newfoundland and Labrador landmark, Gosse said it\u2019s our duty to appreciate them without crossing the line into dependence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re an animal lover \u2014 a true animal lover \u2014 then feeding these foxes is not something you should ever partake in,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Rock Wildlife Rescue would like Parks Canada to crack down on this behaviour so incidents like this don\u2019t happen again<\/p>\n
Download our\u00a0free CBC News app<\/a>\u00a0to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our\u00a0daily headlines newsletter here<\/a>. Click\u00a0here to visit our landing page<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-295191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}