By Mike Swan, GWCT Senior Advisor
This article originally appeared in Shooting Times
“Your dogs won’t like it when they come to stay; that kennel stinks.” So said my father almost 40 years ago. He had given up keeping dogs by then, but there was still a kennel at the bottom of his garden, so that he could board mine when I was going away.
Dad was always a keen vegetable gardener, and if there was one thing that would really wind him up it was the neighbours’ cats, or in this case a vixen, digging in his carefully prepared onion bed. This particular year the crop rotation brought the onions right alongside the kennel, so he had “Left a lamb bone from Sunday lunch in it, rigged a figure of four trip to hold the door open, and stretched a bungy to snap it shut”. One night was all it took, and bingo.
When we moved into Ash Vale in 1963, it seemed like a quiet village in rural Surrey, even though there were neighbours who commuted to London every day on the train. Twenty years later and pretty much all the spare land had been developed into housing estates, leaving the adjacent army training ground as the only real green space. Suddenly, it seemed, we were in perfect urban fox country.
The adaptability of urban foxes
It is easy to think that urban foxes are a new phenomenon, but records of foxes in towns go back to the 1890s in Switzerland, and the 1930s in London. There are lots of urban folk who love to have foxes about, but those who don’t often ask why they don’t go back to the countryside, “where they belong”. But what brought them into town in the first place?
In many ways the answer lies in the foxes’ enormous adaptability. Between the first and second world wars there was a boom in house building, and with more rapid road and rail transport, it became possible to commute to work and escape the slums. Suddenly new housing developments began to move out into the countryside.
So, there is a very valid argument that foxes did not move into town; rather the towns spread out to envelop their territory. With big gardens and lots of space still available to forage in, they simply adapted to a new way of life in suburbia.
Once the naturally cautious foxes began to realise that humans were no great threat in this environment, they started to get bolder. Over time an animal that would never be so daft as to venture into a cage trap, no matter how enticing the bait, began to throw some of its caution to the wind.
For example, I can remember a vixen twenty odd years ago that would doze away the day squeezed into the suntrap between my dad’s fruit cage and his boundary fence. Being a relative stranger, it would watch me carefully as I walked down the garden path to chuck the vegetable peelings onto the compost heap, but it would not even open an eye for mum or dad.
From this sort of situation, it is but a short step to becoming a properly urban fox that goes to town for the night life each evening, hunting for food leftovers in bin bags at the back of restaurants and fast-food outlets.
The history of town foxes and their perception as pests
These days we mostly just live with urban and suburban foxes; public opinion about them is very much split; there are those who worry about the hygiene risk from scats in their garden, or that a particularly bold urban fox will come into their house and savage a baby.
Then, there are lots who love to see them, whether that be just scavenging under the bird table, or coming for food that has been put out specially for them. On that basis it is hardly surprising that most town councils preach tolerance, although they are perhaps also motivated by the fact that this is by far the cheapest option too.
Once upon a time it was not so simple, and town foxes were considered a problem. In the first two decades after WW2 many town dwellers had more recent rural origins, and regarded foxes as a pest, not least because they were a threat to the poultry kept in their gardens.
With food rationing still fresh in the memory, MAFF, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, considered it important to support these people. After an early career at sea, my dad joined “The Ministry” as he called it in the mid-1950s as a ‘Pest Officer’ and one of his first jobs involved foxing in London.
After an early promotion, he found himself in charge of a small gang with the job of driving and shooting foxes in the quieter corners of Town. There were plenty of old bomb sites, and patches of scrub beside railway sidings; perfect quiet daytime retreats for foxes, and therefore just right for a drive or two.
I still remember him coming home after his most successful day, when six Guns accounted for 24, of which he managed 8. I wonder how many people can claim such a high total in a single day whatever the environment?
Urban and rural foxes: behaviour and diet differences
There is a widespread opinion that urban foxes are somehow different from their rural counterparts, and in the behavioural sense there is some truth in that. Throughout my GWCT career I have been regaled by tales of the effectiveness of this or that cage trap for foxes.
Well, after many experiments, and some considerable trying, I can tell you that I have never caught a country fox in a cage. On the other hand, urban pest controllers often find baited cages quite effective.
In terms of diet too, there are sure to be differences; town foxes are notorious for scavenging human food scraps, and also perhaps ‘stealing’ food put out for dogs, cats and hedgehogs, and it is sure to be the case that these items will figure more strongly in their diet compared to those in the countryside.
However, there is no such thing as a fox that will turn its nose up at anthropogenic foods. Recent GWCT studies demonstrate this in the New Forest foxes, where their predation of waders like curlew and lapwing is a serious problem.
Despite being one of the wildest parts of southern England, The Forest is visited by countless tourists each year. As a result, the local foxes find dumped scraps of such things as cheese sandwiches, fish suppers, and pizzas easy pickings, meaning that these add up to a significant part of the diet. This ‘extra’ food supports extra foxes, but that is only part of the story; The Forest is a fox friendly man-made environment in many other ways too, with lots of roadkill and other easy pickings.
This means that we humans are supporting an unnaturally high fox population that in turn imposes an unnaturally high predation pressure on vulnerable species. Ecologists will say that predator populations are regulated by food availability, and this is quite correct, the trouble is the foxes’ catholic tastes mean that they can live at high density, switching prey when something becomes easily available, and snaffling up odd scarce items along the way.
This ‘subsidised predation’ as it is called can be a big issue in conservation terms. With only 30 or 40 pairs of curlews left in the New Forest, they are but a miniscule and seasonal part of the fox diet, and if every single one gets gobbled up, those foxes will never even notice.
There are widespread reports of van loads of town foxes being dumped in the countryside, but when I ask who has seen it happen, I never hear from a real-life witness. These tales are invariably second hand, and while I have no doubt that some are dumped by misguided individuals who think they will be better off “where they really belong”, it is my contention that this happens very infrequently.
Gamekeepers often report bumping into groups when out night shooting, saying that they are so daft that it is easy to shoot the whole lot as they sit on their haunches wondering what is going on. But, have these been dumped? Or are they simply litters of urban cubs that have been squeezed out by population pressure, only to meet their maker before learning the rural ropes?
I think the latter, and I see this as an indication that the population in most towns is at or close to saturation. In this context, recent GWCT tagging studies have shown some amazing fox movements, such as one which went on a tour from the Avon Valley to Southampton and back; a round trip of over 40km.
Town and country foxes: opposite ends of the same spectrum
So, are town and country foxes different from each other? Well, I do not think so. As I see it the most urban foxes in city centres, and the most rural ones in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands are just opposite ends of a spectrum, each adapted to thrive in its own environment, but all part of one remarkably adaptable species.