When a fox calls for “help” in London, an ambulance is often already on its way

Life on the streets, in the alleyways and backyards of a densely built city can be tough, and when foxes need help, they have their own rescue service.

The foxes have not so much invaded London as adapted and extended their range inward, as the city encroached on their habitat in the 1930s and the suburbs grew.

But humans and the bushy-tailed members of the canid family have not always lived in harmony, and the species has both admirers and detractors.

For every person who is enchanted by the sight of a fox trotting nonchalantly down their street at dusk or basking in a sunny backyard, there are many who regard them as pests. They defecate wherever they please, tear apart rubbish, and vixens on heat emit alarming screams in the middle of winter as they attract a mate.

The divide between the two camps prompted Trevor Williams to found the Fox Project almost 35 years ago.

Because of the myths that have built up over the years, there is still a great deal of mistrust towards foxes, said Williams. People believe they bite babies, eat cats, and run off with the husband.

The project has since evolved from providing information on fox deterrence into a rescue operation for 1’400 animals per year, including 400 cubs, of which only about half can be saved and released.

The city offers plentiful food and unique hazards

An estimated 15’000 foxes live in London. The project covers part of south London and its green suburbs, while other organisations that do not deal exclusively with foxes look after other parts of the city.

While the omnivores live on small animals, insects and berries in the wild, in the city they prefer easily found food scraps and feed given to them by humans, making them increasingly dependent on people.

Their greatest dangers in the city are cars, becoming entangled in football nets or getting stuck in narrow spaces. In their efforts to free themselves, they often sustain severe abrasions that can become infected. Many also suffer from mange, a parasitic infestation that leads to all manner of problems.

Nicki Townsend drives her VW Caddy through the streets of the city, along motorways and narrow lanes winding through lush hills, responding to calls about injured or sick foxes or cubs that have lost their mother.

Since her first humbling call-out two and a half years ago, when the supposedly injured fox ran away, she has seen just about everything.

"In my inexperience I ran after it, which is funny, because you can never catch a fox," she said. "I just remember it trotting off at a brisk pace and me looking foolish chasing after it."

Despite many difficult situations — on one occasion she managed to rescue a fox that had slipped on a fence and become stuck upside down at eye level with its paw caught between the boards — she has only been bitten once.

Heartbreak in difficult cases

Her van smells distinctly of the musky scent of foxes. The smell becomes unpleasant when an anxious passenger from a litter of cubs relieves itself on the way to a foster home, where they remain until their release into the wild.

Recently she was called out to a couple who had discovered, with great distress, a cub with a puncture wound on their lawn.

"At first we thought it was sleeping, so we went over to take a closer look because we love them," said Charlotte English. "Then it just stopped moving and we knew something was wrong."

The young animal had to be euthanized, as did the adult animal that Townsend had brought in at the beginning of her shift.

Young animals that recover are socialized in groups of five until they reach adulthood, and then released in rural settings, while the adult animals are released in the urban neighborhoods where they were found.

The Fox Does Not Say "Thank You"

Since foxes are rarely observed, it remains unclear how well they fare after a second chance. A 2016 study in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science found that rehabilitated foxes tended to behave as though they had been displaced after returning to their original territory. They were observed moving farther away, potentially exposing them to more traffic and greater stress.

“This is a knowledge gap, and it is assumed that they do well after release. I think that assumption needs to be challenged more rigorously,” said Bryony Tolhurst, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Brighton and lead author of the study.

For Townsend, the deaths among foxes are offset by the joy of watching young foxes venture into the unknown, or an adult fox slipping back into a neighborhood that is immediately familiar to it.

“Sometimes they look back, and people like to romanticize that and think they are saying ‘thank you,’” she said. “They just want to make sure we are not following them.”