Here's a thought experiment for you: what would persuade you to wear a new fur coat?
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What if it was made from the pelt of a species that has wiped out 16 Australian mammals and counting?
What if wearing the coat could be considered an act of conservation?
Canberra-based conservationist Emma Sinclair found herself asking these very questions as she learned more and more about the devastating effect foxes and cats were having on Australia's native wildlife.
The "self-confessed wildlife nerd" hit on an idea: if she could find a way to commodify the pelts of foxes, she might create some breathing room for native animals.
"I'm against the fur industry in general ... but this is a really specific different scenario," she says.
"Why aren't we using fox fur? With all the culling that's happening around Australia, why are we just letting those pelts disintegrate in the field where they fall? That feels wasteful to me."
She wondered if there was a way to incentivise hunting, offer to buy the pelts, and then use them for something.
A trip to Paris for a friend's wedding prompted her to learn more from a country where the fur industry was still thriving. She also needed to learn how to sew, having never mended anything or even sewn on a button before.
Her new business, Almanac, is starting out small. She has so far only produced a wool beanie (with locally sourced wool and knitted on a 50-year-old Toyota sewing machine she taught herself to use) with a fox-fur pom-pom.
Down the track, she intends to create fox scarves and coats. But while completing a master's in biodiversity conservation at ANU, she needs to build up the funds to take the business further.
Her journey to creating a fox fur garment business has taken her to wool mills, Parisian ateliers and rural fox hunts.
She has learnt how to design garments and knit, and can tell you more about the different pelt tanning processes you ever wanted to know.
But the hardest part has been convincing others that it's OK to wear the pelt of a species if it's helping save others.
"This is not normal fur, this is conservation fur, and I'm really trying to spread a similar message to what they have in New Zealand with their possum trade," she says.
"Wearing fur is an act of conservation in itself. It'll certainly be a conversation which I, as the owner and founder of this project, am having all the time, but eventually, when I do sell bigger coats and bigger items, my customers will also be having [the conversation]. I think there's a lot of value in that educational component as well.
"Over this journey, I've talked to people that don't even know foxes are invasive, they don't even know they're introduced to Australia. So it's really about meeting people where they're at."
Among the many people she's met have been farmers who are suffering devastating financial losses when their livestock is destroyed by foxes.
She's met ethical hunters who are on board with her messaging, wombat rescuers concerned about the mange being spread by foxes, and tanners willing to try more sustainable and less environmentally damaging tanning methods.
She says it usually takes about 15 seconds to get people to think more deeply about what she's doing, and even vegans she's spoken to have agreed the project makes sense from a conservation perspective.
"When I do get naysayers, they say things like, 'Oh, this is disgusting, you should leave them to be with the fox'. And I say, 'Well, that's just an absolute waste'.
"And it also seems to me disrespectful, that we just would leave that resource to just wilt away for no reason whatsoever."
But she says she wants to emphasise "the sadness I feel in having to remove foxes".
"I'm an animal-lover at heart, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing," she says.
"There is no bloodlust here for me. But the sadness I feel about walking through silent bushland, knowing that it should be bustling with amazing and unique wildlife will always be more impactful to me than the loss of introduced species.
"Foxes have directly contributed to the extinction of 16 mammals in Australia. They're currently considered a threat to 75 more. They cost the agricultural industry about $227 million a year in predation and also spreading diseases.
"So it's certainly something to contend with, and I don't want to undermine that gut reaction that people have of 'You're wearing fur, that's awful'. I really, truly support that.
"But I just want there to be some nuance in well."
