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When Brian Summers, a keen hunter, set up cameras in Canberra's south to monitor deer movements, he didn't expect to capture vision of a fox hunting. Mr Summers put cameras, with permission from the landowner, on a rural property south of Tharwa in the hope he could "try and get a handle on what [the deer are] doing and where they are". "I deployed a couple of cameras in spots on his property, really just to see where the deer were and if they were using particular spots regularly," Mr Summers said. "I had set up a camera looking at a soak, where water basically comes from the ground and forms a permanent pool, and it picked up some deer coming and going at different times of the night." He said he would check the vision once a week and to his surprise images of a fox with a wallaby appeared. The vision, a seven-second clip captured in late 2014, shows a fox attacking an adult red-necked wallaby. "To me it's something that shows this is another thing that foxes do and I was just lucky enough to have a camera out to capture a fox with a macropod," he said. Mr Summers entered the clip and won a competition asking people to submit photos and videos of feral species held by the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions. "I did nothing with it for quite a while, besides showing it around to quite a few people, so it just sat on my thumb drive," he said. "Then I saw an email about the feral photo competition and it mentioned video and I though 'Oh I've got a video of a feral and it's quite interesting'." Communications manager for the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions Ian McDonald said to his knowledge, the vision was one of the first pieces of remote camera footage showcasing this type of attack. "The annual competition first begun in 2011 to raise awareness of the feral animal problem and the impact they have on both our agricultural and environmental systems," Mr McDonald said. "Videos such as this year's winner can be confronting to watch but they are the reality. They highlight the crucial need for ongoing management programs to control feral predators such as foxes, feral cats and wild dogs." He said an adult wallaby can weight up to 18 kilograms, which can be double the weight of a fox. "In the video both animals look about the same size but until now most researchers thought foxes would not be brazen enough to try and take down an animal of the same size and during daylight as well," he said. "It has actually shocked many." Mr McDonald said the clip also showcased how remote cameras gave more information like never before. "It would be very unlikely that a person would see this happening. Similar to many people attaching dash board cameras to their cars, many farmers are now using remote cameras to understand animal movements on their property," he said. "Recent research undertaken through our centre has found that feral predator management programs are having positive outcomes for not only the agricultural sector but for native wildlife as well, with positive outcomes for quoll and wallaby populations seen in various regions."

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