Outfoxed! Urban foxes have become bolder than ever - and we are powerless to stop them

As urban foxes become bolder than ever, Iain Hollingshead discovers that hunting them down in our cities is harder than you think.

Urban fox numbers may be stable but they are undoubtedly becoming bolder Photo: REX FEATURES

In a recent poll of nearly 4,000 British households, 65.7 per cent said that they liked urban foxes, 25.8 per cent had no strong views and only 8.5 per cent admitted to disliking the creatures.

I wonder what the figures would look like if the same poll were conducted now. At the end of a week that started with two nine-month-old girls being attacked in Hackney, it seems there is no one left who doesn’t hold an extremely strong opinion about just how fantastic Mr Urban Fox actually is.

One doesn’t want in any way to make light of the recent trauma. Both girls were badly mauled; one is recovering well, the other remains in a stable condition on a ventilator. And yet somehow the topic has expanded beyond an isolated incident in north London to dominate office conversation and newspaper headlines.

“Stay calm on fox risk,” advised a panicky editorial in the Daily Mirror on Wednesday. Various fox experts (although aren’t we all experts now?) have been wheeled out to reassure worried urbanites that mankind – and not foxes – are still, ultimately, in control of the world’s nuclear arsenals.

John Bryant, of the British Humane Wildlife Deterrence Association, has had a particularly busy few days, telling any newspaper that will listen that, in his 40 years’ experience, he has heard of only two cases of fox attacks: “One victim was a cat, another a German shepherd” (a dog, presumably, not a Teutonic herdsman).Others have pointed out that last year 5,221 people, including 1,250 children, were treated in hospital in England after being mauled by man’s best friend: the dog.

And yet, regardless, there now seem to be plenty of people who want revenge. Other Hackney residents, some of whom have not previously spoken out for fear of being laughed at, have come forward to say that they, too, have been attacked by foxes. The airwaves have been awash with stories of mutilated chickens and terrorised cats. How long until the Hackney Hunt rides, in red coats and skinny black jeans, perhaps, through London Fields?

The tide, it seems, is finally turning against the urban fox – about time, too, for those many rural dwellers frustrated by New Labour’s metropolitan, anthropomorphic misunderstanding of fox-hunting. Tony Blair’s administration spent 700 hours of parliamentary time debating the topic. That now looks like the mere opening salvo on the great British love/hate affair with the fox.

Although urban fox numbers have remained stable over the past few decades – according to the University of Bristol’s Mammal Research Unit, around 33,000 (16 per cent) live in cities – they are undoubtedly becoming bolder. Fortnightly bin collections, with rubbish piling up in the streets, are often blamed.

“I think they have simply got our measure,” says Trevor Williams, director of The Fox Project charity. “They know that we are slow. They are not even chased or shouted at.”

Well, should we take this kind of provocation lying down? Personally, I do not want revenge. I do not have any chickens, or small children. I live in a top-floor flat in London. And having grown up in the countryside, I have always found something reassuring about spotting a flash of fox in the concrete jungle. Good luck to them. As long as they’re not bothering me.

But what if they are bothering you? What could I do if I found myself terrorised by an urban fox?

Not a lot, according to my local council, which has a web page devoted to the subject. As well as providing some intriguingly ambiguous information on the stamina of a male fox – “Foxes tend to 'scream’ during the winter mating season and usually last for just a few weeks” – it states that it has neither a legal duty nor the resources to control fox numbers.

So it would have to be a private hit. But how to find a hit man? There is no shortage of pest-control companies, many of which offer fox-culling services. But they are remarkably sly when it comes to asking for more information. Yes, says one, you can interview us, as long as you write nothing about the disposal process. Another has understandable fears about reprisals from animal rights activists, who have made threatening phone calls in the past. A third promises to show me a trap, but changes its mind when it can’t get permission from the client.

I speak to Bruce Lindsay-Smith, 50, who has been shooting foxes for more than 25 years. Widely regarded as the godfather of the quick and effective kill, he disposes of around 70 urban foxes a week and once claimed to have shot up to 28 foxes in a single night.

Lindsay-Smith invites me to join him on an evening’s shooting spree on a Surrey golf course. Unfortunately, he then goes quiet and I am never given the location or the time. Perhaps the client declined permission. Or maybe it was raining too hard. In any case, I am a little relieved when I do more research and discover that Lindsay-Smith has a criminal record for assaulting a victim, back in 1988, for 80p and a bus pass.

I then find someone who knows a fox-hunter active in Hackney at this very moment. “But he won’t even talk to me about it,” I am told. “He’s very discreet. And that’s his appeal.” The shadowy world of fox control appears to be darker and more impenetrable than the mafia.

It is something of a surprise, then, to meet Paul Inglis, 32, the instantly likeable founder of Power Pest Control, which operates in London and the Home Counties. Many of their clients with fox problems – which constitute about 10 per cent of their business – live in affluent areas such as Chiswick, in west London, and have been driven to distraction by a fox making a mess of their garden or scaring their animals. True to the English stereotype, protection of their children seems to come third, behind their love for their rose bed or guinea-pig.

Inglis’s men hand the client a steel cage, about a metre-and-a-half long, baited with food and water. The fox walks in, the door closes behind him and Power Pest Control is summoned to dispatch it with a quick shot. The carcass is stored by a vet in a freezer before being taken away to be burnt.

Inglis, who professes to a “massive respect” for wildlife – “especially rats, as they’re so bloody clever” – says the job is rewarding as it helps people in distress. Although he admits “there is no such thing as humane pest control”, he does not believe the fox struggles in the cage for more than 10 minutes. He also claims his methods are far preferable to trapping and releasing, which is not only illegal but counter-productive. “If you put an urban fox, 90 per cent of which have mange, in a rural area, it’s going to die anyway,” he says. “There are no bins for food and it will be fought by other foxes.”

Many argue that culling, too, is counter-productive. Urban foxes, with a territory of around 60 acres, will simply take over the deceased’s patch. According to the Mammal Research Unit, at least 70 per cent of urban foxes would need to be killed each year, and every year for a long time, to reduce numbers.

The real alternative, according to Bryant, “is to leave them in their territory to keep other foxes out and educate them about where they are not welcome”.

An entire “educative” industry has grown up around non-lethal fox control. Companies such as Foxolutions, which has had a “phenomenal amount of interest” this week, offer scented repellants, prickly strips that affix to the top of a fence, and devices that spray water and air at the fox. Interplex Solar, based in Birmingham, is currently selling 10 times as many Nite Eyes as usual – a solar-powered device that scares away foxes with a red flashing light.

Inglis sighs. “Please don’t start buying that kind of stuff. You’ll only end up paying twice.”

And there, in a nutshell, you have the dilemma – financial, moral or biological – for anyone worried about urban foxes. If you want your local one killed, you can have it done, legally and relatively cleanly, and live fox-free until another one takes its place. Yet to make a significant inroad, someone would have to pay for a foxmageddon of 23,100 urban foxes (70 per cent) every year for the next few years. And one can only imagine the howls of anguish that that kind of cull would cause.

If, on the other hand, you have moral qualms about killing a fox, you can pay for products to deter them from your garden and entice them into your neighbours’, where they can terrorise their chickens, cats and children instead of yours.

So it’s every man, and every fox, for himself – at least until the next poor child gets mauled by the family dog and we start worrying about that again, instead. No one is awaiting the Dangerous Foxes Act with baited breath.