If you want biodiversity, and the UK is signed up to many conventions that says it does, foxes have to be controlled. Unfortunately the rubbish and food waste in urban areas artificially supports a high concentration of foxes which then augment the rural population. This population is not controlled by the availability of prey items but by the number of macdonalds and pizza huts. There would be no Little Terns, or probably any shorebirds, breeding on the east coast if Foxes were not controlled. Most of this control is done by shooting and snares. Fox hunting does very little to control the number of foxes. But it is clearly an upper class form of entertainment and full of pageantry and so attracts political attention.
