SCOURGE OF THE URBAN FOX
Following the attack on a baby in Plymouth this week, we look at the growing problem with a breed whose numbers have risen five-fold to 150,000 in the past 20 years
IT is a moment of pure horror. As seven-month-old Raeya Wyatt happily played in the living room of her home in Plymouth this week, a fox sneaked in through the open back door and attacked her. By the time grandad Darren Boundry managed to scare the animal away, Raeya had been bitten on her foot and hand and, said mum Leanne, was lucky not to have been “ripped to pieces”.
Leanne also revealed how the fox had been a regular visitor to their back garden for several days before the attack and just the day before had killed their neighbour’s cat.
“It had been walking along the side for several days,” she said. “The attack lasted 30 seconds but in another minute it could have been a lot worse and ripped her to pieces. You don’t expect a fox to behave in that way.”
Unfortunately, however, this week’s attack is not as unexpected as one might think. In 2013 four-week-old Denny Dolan was savaged by a fox in his London home so severely that one of his fingers had to be surgically reattached.
The same year three-year-old Alfie Whitelock was pounced on while playing in the snow outside his home in Kent. In 2010 ninemonth-old twins Lola and Isabella Koupparis were mauled as they slept in their cots in east London, leaving them covered in blood.
And just last month a fox was reported to be “terrorising” the village of Storrington, West Sussex, in a two-day rampage that saw it attack a schoolgirl, a Tesco delivery driver and several Waitrose shoppers – as well as savaging a man sleeping on a park bench so viciously that his ear was almost severed.
The RSPCA maintains that fox attacks remain “extremely unusual”, with a spokesman adding: “It’s not typical fox behaviour at
How do we control tHe increasing numbers in our towns and cities?
BEFORE the ban on hunting foxes with hounds was introduced by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 2004, registered hunts killed about 25,000 foxes a year.
During last year’s election campaign, Theresa May – who has “always been in favour of fox-hunting” – pledged to hold a free vote on the issue in this Parliament but subsequently dropped the idea.
According to Jonathan Reynolds, head of predation at the Game And Wildlife all. Foxes will come closer to a house if there are food sources. But they usually back off and run away when there are people around.” Yet new figures would suggest that the problem is only going to get worse.
A report published in the New Scientist last month revealed that the urban fox population has “soared five-fold” in the past two decades, from 33,000 in the 1990s to 150,000 today.
ACCORDING to Dawn Scott of the University of Brighton, “they are more or less resident in all UK cities now”. Her team calculated that Newcastle upon Tyne is home to about 10 foxes per square kilometre, Bournemouth has 23 per square kilometre.
They are also becoming more bold – and, with the rise in their population, more competitive for food. Although children are still Conservation Trust, controlling the urban fox population is far trickier than managing numbers in the countryside.
“In rural areas the main method is shooting. And in those months when that’s not viable because of the need to protect ground-nesting birds, humane snaring is effective.
“The problem,” he adds, “is that neither of these methods is an option in urban areas.”
Reynolds explains that in cities, fox control is not the responsibility of councils. It’s far more likely to be attacked by dogs than foxes, experts say foxes can be attracted by the smell of nappies, with some even fishing them out of bin bags.
And it seems there is little that can be done about it. Jonathan Reynolds of conservation charity the Game And Wildlife Conservation Trust explains that while 39,000 rural foxes are shot or snared every year by gamekeepers, a figure largely unchanged despite the ban on hunting with dogs, there is no similar strategy to cope with urban foxes.
“Tactics used to control the fox population in the countryside simply can’t be used in towns for practical reasons,” he says. “Plus of course these animals are far bolder than their rural cousins and many will have grown up surrounded by manmade things.
“And these figures seem to show foxes are moving into urban areas to a far greater extent than we previously thought. It looks to be an issue that will only get more pressing.” up to householders to pay for a private pest controller who will then use live traps.
“They are then encouraged to dispatch the fox humanely, though some have questioned what really happens,” he says.
“There is a debate as to whether it is worth paying for a pest controller to remove a fox, as the figures seem to show that it will be replaced very quickly by another one.
“We may just have to learn to live with the urban fox – there’s no current practical solution.”