Urban foxes: Conflicts
Foxes can be a nuisance to gardeners and allotment owners because of fouling, digging or damaging garden plants. Moreover, in autumn and winter, the main dispersal and breeding seasons, foxes can be heard screaming and barking and thus disturbing people's sleep or prompting dogs to bark. However, foxes cause little serious nuisance in towns and most problems are easily solved by using commercially available repellents or simple advice on how to deter foxes from gardens (link to an external website).
Foxes kill very few pets, and very few rifle dustbins. In Bristol, where 5480 households were surveyed, only 2.7% reported that foxes frequently rifled their dustbins, 16.4% occasionally and 80.9% never. With the introduction of wheelie bins, this low level of nuisance has disappeared.
In reality, the majority of people like urban foxes. In a survey about wildlife in their garden completed by nearly 4000 household across Britain, 65.7% liked urban foxes, 25.8% had no strong views and only 8.5% disliked urban foxes. In a recent survey by The Mammal Society foxes were voted one of the most popular British mammals.
Question & Answer
TopHow can I keep my pet safe from foxes?
If you know that foxes regularly visit your garden, ensure that pets are caged each night in a pen with:
- a weld-mesh front (not chicken wire, which is not fox proof)
- a solid floor so that foxes cannot dig underneath
- a secure lock that cannot be worked loose (i.e. not a latch)
TopHow can I protect my cat from foxes?
Whilst risks to cats are very low, and foxes and cats generally ignore each other, keeping cats indoors at night further reduces the risks.
Keeping cats indoors at night is also beneficial to local wildlife (cats are predators and many kill wild mammals and birds) and reduces the risks of your cat being involved in a road traffic accident.
TopHow do I prevent a fox from coming into my garden?
The Fox Project runs an excellent Deterrent Helpline and also provides a leaflet with useful advice on how to discourage foxes from gardens. For instance, making cat, bird or other food unavailable to foxes will make a garden less attractive to foxes or using fertilizers that do not contain fish, bone or blood products will stop foxes from digging in flowerbeds or lawns in search of a non-existent carcass.
TopHow do I get rid of a fox from under a shed?
If foxes are denning under your shed, just soak some rags or straw with a deterrent (available at most garden centres) and loosely block all the holes, which are the entrances to the den.
Do not block the holes with bricks as this will prevent the female from getting to the cubs and they will starve to death. Each morning replace the rags and straw in the hole. Once the rags or straw have not been moved for a couple of days, there will be no foxes left under your shed and you can permanently block the holes.
TopHow do I prevent foxes from denning underneath my shed/house?
It is important to ensure that all holes around a shed/house are adequately blocked with sturdy materials. Foxes can use holes all year round, but denning with cubs is largely restricted to the period from March to June. As above, it is important to lightly infill holes and to only block holes properly once the infill is not disturbed for a few days. It is important to make doubly sure no foxes are under your shed/house before permanently blocking holes.
TopDo foxes attack children/people?
Occasionally the press reports attacks on children that are said to be by foxes, but very often the bite wounds do not appear to be typical fox bites. It is not impossible that a child could be bitten by a fox but, if it occurs, it is extremely rare. In comparison, the risk of injury from domestic dogs and cats is very much higher. For example, in the USA about 5 million people are bitten by dogs each year and 15 to 20 people die from dog bites yearly. Most of the victims are children. Similarly, there are more than 400,000 cat bites each year in the USA. There are no good statistics from Britain, but it is likely that the number of dog and cat bites is around a fifth of those recorded in the USA. Even in countries where rabies is present, humans are much more likely to be bitten by a rabid domestic dog than by a fox.
The risks of people being attacked by a fox are negligible compared to the risks of being attacked by a domestic dog or cat.
References
- Baker, P. & Harris, S. (2007) Urban mammals: what does the future hold? An analysis of the factors affecting patterns of use of residential gardens in Great Britain. Mammal Review, in press
- Harris, S. (1981) The food of suburban foxes (Vulpes vulpes), with special reference to London. Mammal Review 11, 151-168.
- Anonymous. Dog Bite Law.
