Foxes and the spread of Sweet Briar
Fox scats of Sweet Briar fruits and seeds, photo taken in nature reserve east of The Fair (W.Pix).
Foxes are highly adaptable opportunistic omnivores. They hunt and scavenge, and take a wide variety of vertebrate and invertebrate prey, both native and introduced and they eat plant material such as rose hips, blackberries and fruits of other introduced plants. The seeds take several hours to pass through a fox’s digestive system, allowing time for seeds to be dispersed over large areas.
Friends of Mt Majura volunteers began tackling Sweet Briars in the nature reserve east of The Fair in 2012; some of the shrubs were a couple of meters tall and wide such as the fruiting Sweet Briar shown below.
