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Foxes are members of the wild dog family. Worldwide they comprise a group of over twenty species, characterised by grace and adaptability. Because they are closely related to domestic dogs, they seem tantalisingly familiar, yet their wildness brings an elusive mystery. The red fox has the widest geographical range of any wild carnivore, thriving in habitats from woodland and desert to city centre. Its cousins have mastered the extreme of wilderness - the Arctic fox far above the Arctic Circle. the fennec fox deep in the Sahara. This stunning adaptability and ability to thrive under extremes of climate and habitat also brings them into diverse conflicts with people. The problems range from the large and life-threatening, like rabies, through to more local such as the loss of livestock. The future of the world's foxes shares the same uncertainties that threatens all of Nature, the root cause is the sprawling growth of the human population and the loss and fragmentation of habitat which confines small mumbers to slivers of wilderness.
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