Top dog COVER STORY How red foxes have maximised on life in the metropolis

Urban foxes are well adapted to city life – even hitching a ride on public transport. Though some people view them as pests, most relish the chance to see wildlife amid the metropolis.

When you live in a city, it’s such a thrill to see a flash of something wild. We should thank our lucky stars we’ve got urban foxes. They’ve just as much right to be in London as sparrows.”

Newsreader Zeb Soanes, owner of one of the most recognisable voices in Britain and a warmly reassuring presence on BBC Radio 4, has left behind the worries of the world and is instead enthusing about the capital’s flame-furred, bushy-tailed residents. He is, after all, someone who can turn reading the shipping forecast into poetry.

We are talking in a cafe near Trafalgar Square, hidden down exactly the sort of side street a fox might nip along. With us is Professor Fiona Mathews, chair of the Mammal Society. Last summer, Zeb became the charity’s first patron, after meeting Fiona when she appeared on Today to discuss fox populations. The story of how the urbane broadcaster fell for the urban fox reveals much about our nation’s conflicted, on-off love affair with all things vulpine.

“Three years ago, I cycled home to find a female fox with an injured leg sitting by my flat,” Zeb remembers. “It was the most beautiful fox I had ever seen. In fact, I’d never been that close to a fox before. So, I raided the fridge for whatever leftovers I could find, put it outside, and over the next two weeks as I kept feeding the fox, its leg got noticeably better. ‘Gaspard’ continued to visit almost every night – and still does.” Zeb knew little about foxes back then, and doesn’t feed them anymore. “When

I read up about it, I realised there’s already more than enough food for all London’s foxes,” he says. Gaspard also had a surprise in store. “One day, she didn’t come to our doorstop as usual. She got up, walked to the bins and on to the garages – I’m trying not to anthropomorphise, but it felt like she was leading me – and reached the hole in the fence that led to her earth. I peered over, and there was Gaspard surrounded by her six cubs.” A week and a half later, the vixen brought the litter to the front door. Gaspard has since become a mum a second time – Zeb can recognise all her offspring by their distinctive faces – and she has inspired the smitten newsreader to write a series of bestselling picture books for children, which follow the intrepid fox on adventures around the capital. Gaspard’s London Foxtrot is being set to music, and the orchestral tale,

We should thank our lucky stars we’ve got urban foxes. They’ve just as much right to be in London as sparrows.

in the tradition of Peter and the Wolf, will be performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra at its premiere in July.

Up close and personal

Countless Gaspards up and down the country are giving us glimpses into the fascinating world of the fox, and city-dwellers like Zeb, who regularly posts Instagram updates, are sharing photos or videos of their local foxes online. In the UK – a crowded, increasingly nature-depleted nation – it is, after all, gardens and other urban areas that provide many people with their first and most intimate wildlife encounters. Fiona Mathews points out that towns and cities have become by far the best place to see foxes, as well as hedgehogs, another of our most charismatic mammals.

It helps that urban foxes can be, as Fiona puts it, “bold as brass”. They sunbathe on garden lawns, raise families under sheds

and decking, and stroll down high streets – occasionally even in daylight. One was pictured riding in a Tube carriage, while an individual nicknamed Romeo frequented the 72nd floor of the Shard during construction of the skyscraper, living off builders’ scraps. Another fox toured the metropolis on the top deck of a sightseeing bus, having snuck onboard in the depot overnight. Joanna Lumley famously lets neighbourhood foxes cuddle up on her sofa.

Not so, the country fox. “In rural areas, foxes avoid human habitation like the plague,” Fiona says. “They tend to be very cautious and shy.” Simple self-preservation: foxes are still widely hunted and controlled, especially on farmland and near pheasant shoots. Many tens of thousands of foxes are deliberately killed in the British countryside every year, though road traffic and disease (also major causes of fox mortality in cities) take a much higher toll.

Filling the gaps

While limited culling may be justified on conservation grounds – even the RSPB does it in certain circumstances, to protect nests of threatened terns and wading birds – Fiona questions the perverse rationale that drives other “mindless” persecution of these mammals. “Take out foxes and you get what’s known as compensatory breeding,” she says. “If you create a ‘hole’ in the population, not only do surviving females reproduce more, but their young are more likely to survive.”

The Hidden World of the Fox, ecologist

Adele Brand’s recent book, has this to say: “The fixation with the idea that fox numbers must grow unless some die violently is not grounded in reality… the fox that was shot would probably have died in natural turnover before the next breeding season anyway.” For good measure, Brand adds: “Nobody would claim that New York’s mafia kill enough people to reduce the human population of that city, or that flats thus vacated aren’t soon occupied by new families, and yet that is analogous to Boris Johnson’s logic in arguing for an urban fox cull.”

The battle of wits between poultrykeeper and fox has been waged since time immemorial, with the latter usually on the losing side, but Zeb argues that the reputation as a wasteful, savage predator is unfair. “People talk about foxes breaking into chicken coops, and I think: how very sensible! Kill all the chickens, stop the fuss, then calmly keep returning to take away the bodies. It is just sensible, methodical killing.”

You have to put this behaviour in an evolutionary perspective, adds Fiona. “In the natural world, it’s not normal to come across 50 chickens at once. Foxes are programmed that if they see more than one thing, they predate them all. They are well known for

An individual named Romeo frequented the 72nd floor of the Shard during construction.

caching food to eat later.”

With urban chicken-keeping now growing in popularity, this age-old conflict is spilling over into cities. In December, Jolyon Maugham QC was front-page news when he beat a fox to death after it became trapped in the back-garden chicken enclosure at his London home. The debate that followed was as vicious as it’s ever been. Victim or vermin? Foxes, however blameless, just can’t help making some people see red.

The blame game

We grumble that city foxes rip open bin bags and rummage through recycling boxes (“Domestic cats and dogs are probably worse”, says Fiona). Another complaint is that they cause a mess (again, our pets are the main culprits). Or that they pose a danger to babies and young children (despite experts having cast doubt on some of the most lurid fox attacks reported in the media). Curiously, though, when it comes to stealing footwear, they’re guilty as charged.

Supporters of foxes – by far the majority of the UK population, polls suggest – remind their enemies that they bring joy to millions in a country that has long lost its wolves, lynx and bears, and almost all of its wildcats. By controlling numbers of small mammals, this native carnivore plays a key part in many ecosystems, even in cities. “We’d have a lot more rats if it wasn’t for foxes,” laughs Zeb.

Size matters when it comes to our perception of the species. “People have got this idea that foxes are as big as Alsatians,

“It’s only over the past 30 or so years that foxes have been reported in urban areas nationwide.”

that they’re going to rip their cat to pieces,” says Fiona. “But they’re more like a spaniel – a fairly petite, elegant animal. A well-fed tabby can easily fend off a fox.” Research in gardens involving camera-traps has shown that foxes lose most of their squabbles with hedgehogs over food. Hardly top dog!

But are foxes booming, as is often claimed? Here, the picture gets murkier. Estimates suggest there could be around a quarter of a million foxes in Britain, but even Mammal Society scientists admit to not having a precise idea of rural fox numbers because there have been so few population studies. Part of the problem is that foxes live pretty much everywhere, from coast to mountain, so you need to know their density in each different habitat to arrive at an overall figure.

What does seem to be clear is that urban foxes are a relatively new phenomenon. “Bristol, Oxford and London have had foxes for quite a while, for reasons that we don’t fully understand,” Fiona explains, “but it’s only over the past 30 or so years that foxes have been reported in urban areas nationwide. It can’t be that people have only just started mentioning them, because there would have been historical records from pest controllers and other sources.”

Family matters

Behaviour aside, there is no obvious divide between urban and rural foxes, which mingle and interbreed in the fringes of suburbia. These animals range a long way – 10km is nothing for a fox. But Fiona says she would love to carry out a detailed genetic study to see if there is any trend towards urban and rural populations separating.

Zeb recalls the occasion when, half a mile from home, he spotted a familiar profile in the distance. “I thought: ‘Gaspard!’ And then I got closer, and it was. Another time I bumped into her, she trotted at my heels all the way home.” It takes a cold heart not to be touched by such stories.

“Foxes get a bad press,” Zeb continues, “but I have seen how tender they are, how family-oriented. Other females, even if they’re not having a litter, support the pregnant vixen. When the cubs first emerge, you see how pale they are. And then you watch the red colour in their pelage develop, and how their faces change as they grow up. At first, they have great gangly legs and very long, almost simian tails. I’ll never tire of watching them.”

BEN HOARE is editorial consultant for BBC Wildlife. His latest book is Wonders of Nature (DK, £20).

FIND OUT MORE Zeb Soanes’ Gaspard the Fox picture books, recordings and school events: gaspardthefox.com

Dos and don’ts of feeding foxes: www.thefoxwebsite.net/faq/feedingfoxes

The red fox has been part of the urban landscape of southern Britain since the 1930s. The large, leafy gardens that appeared as the suburbs expanded proved the perfect habitat.

A fox rests, using its bushy tail like a blanket for warmth. Top left: traffic is a major cause of mortality for the species. Bottom right: Zeb and Gaspard. Bottom left: in urban areas, foxes get about half of their food from rubbish bins and household refuse.

Above: if you haven’t seen foxes out and about, prowling our streets, you may well have heard their barks and cries, especially in late winter, which is their breeding season.

Above: fox cubs are usually born in March or April. They stay with their mother for less than a year, before seeking territory of their own. Left: a cub defends its prize of a brown rat – controlling the rodent population. Below: foxes use dens for shelter, but in summer will also relax in the open, when not attending to their young. A 19th-century engraving of the ever-cunning Reynard the Fox.

Above: a fox patrols a London allotment. With their populations of mice, voles and other prey species, these green spaces are a popular haunt for foxes. Left: out on the town.