There is an increasing and sinister trend on social media, where ignorance and lack of respect for wildlife reigns. Where wildlife abuse, exploitation and commodification are deemed acts of 'kindness' and it is getting more depraved, with people putting the foxes, their neighbours and even their patients, at risk. Do we care enough about the fox and our native wildlife to address it?

Introduction

Despite declines in biodiversity worldwide, fox populations are relatively stable in the UK and do not require supplementary feeding. Foxes are extremely adaptable and opportunistic hunters that live primarily on diets of insects and small mammals. The supplementary feeding of foxes in the UK is undertaken for the benefit of the person feeding the fox only and is commonly used to encourage wildlife into a garden for viewing. Feeding wildlife like foxes is considered an act that is illegal in many other countries, deemed 'animal harassment'.

Feeding wild foxes is not promoted by wildlife rescues and is a practice that can be triggering to discuss, often combatted with anti-hunt sentiments or the declaration that humanity is destroying their habitats, without any understanding that feeding foxes does not stop hunting nor does it replace lost habitats. Such behaviour is often undertaken with good intentions or to fill a lack of connection in the persons own life and is aimed at providing support for the foxes, however misguided or harmful.

While the act of feeding wild foxes may seem harmless or even beneficial on the surface, it can have far-reaching negative consequences for both fox populations and the wider ecosystem. From disrupting natural behaviours to altering population dynamics and increasing the risk of disease transmission, the impacts of feeding wild foxes extend beyond the immediate feeding sites. Those claiming it is for "treatment" as some form of justification, when they self-diagnosed and got the drugs offline, is not acceptable either, this is how you make drug resistance WORSE.

When Feeding Practices Are Unethical

What are the inappropriate ways to feed wildlife?

Feeding wildlife in inappropriate ways can have consequences for both the animals and their environment. Here are some examples of inappropriate ways to feed wildlife:

• Feeding Incorrect Diets: Providing food that does not meet the nutritional needs of wildlife can lead to malnutrition and health problems. For example, feeding processed human food can cause nutrient deficiencies and disrupt their natural dietary routines. Additionally, fever coat is an increasingly observed condition in fox litters, potentially caused by illness and malnutrition.

• Feeding Large Amounts of Food: Providing excessive amounts of food can lead to overeating, obesity, and other health issues for wildlife. It can also attract large numbers of animals to feeding sites, increasing competition and aggression among them.

• Attracting Pests: Food left out uncovered, in dirty bowls, or filled beyond capacity, will attract pests like flies, parasites, and rodents. These pests can pick up and transmit diseases, which can then be spread to both wildlife and humans, posing health risks to both.

• Feeding Inappropriately Presented Food: Food presented inappropriately introduces the risk of disease transmission and can reduce the behaviours wildlife need to maintain fitness. It also increases the risk of competition and food aggression.

• Feeding at Inappropriate Times: Feeding wildlife outside of their natural routines disrupts their behaviour patterns, potentially bringing them out at times that increase their risk of road traffic accidents (RTAs) and human-animal conflicts.

• Feeding Near or Inside Human Homes: Feeding wildlife near or inside human homes can lead to habituation and aggressive behaviour from animals seeking food. It can also create unsanitary conditions and damage property. Habituated animals will take that behaviour elsewhere and can potentially teach it to their young.

• Feeding Near Roads or High Traffic Areas: Feeding wildlife near roads or high traffic areas can increase the risk of vehicle collisions and mortality among the animals.

• Feeding Wildlife by Hand: Hand-feeding wildlife can lead to habituation and aggression toward humans, creating a behaviour know as 'aggressive begging', where an animal will nip at a person or their belongings, in order to elicit a feeding response. Hand feeding can also increase the risk of disease transmission between animals and humans and it increases the risk of a bite.

• Feeding Wildlife in Protected Areas: Feeding wildlife in protected areas disrupts natural behaviours and can lead to conflicts with conservation efforts. It can also cause damage to sensitive habitats.

Overall it's important to avoid feeding wildlife in ways that disrupt their natural behaviour, health, and the balance of their ecosystems. Providing appropriate habitats and conserving natural food sources is usually the best approach to support wildlife populations.

What are the negative impacts of feeding wild foxes?

Feeding wild foxes can have several negative impacts:

• Health Problems: Feeding foxes processed human food can lead to obesity and related health issues like diabetes and joint problems.

• Pest Attraction: Large amounts of food can attract pests like flies, parasites, and rodents, which can spread diseases to foxes, people and other wildlife.

• Disease Transmission: Gathering in large numbers to feed increases the risk of disease transmission among foxes, leading to outbreaks that can reduce fox populations.

• Altered Behavior: Habituation to human-provided food disrupts natural foraging behavior, feeding times, and movement patterns, leading to increased risk of conflict and injury.

• Habitat Degradation: Concentrated feeding sites can lead to habitat degradation due to trampling, erosion, and waste accumulation. This can impact not only foxes but also other species in the ecosystem.

• Increased Mortality: Habituated foxes become more susceptible to predation or vehicle collisions as they lose their wariness of humans and roads, becoming active at busier times.

• Human Conflict and Bites: Feeding foxes can encourage aggressive behavior towards humans, increasing the risk of bites and conflicts that may lead to their control or destruction.

• Habituation and Domestication: Feeding can lead to habituation and genetic changes resembling domestication over time. This is especially true if foxes are habituated when young.

• Competition and Predation: Feeding can increase aggression and competition, as well as increasing competition with other wildlife, altering predator-prey relationships.

• Changes in Behavior: Habituated foxes may become bolder or more aggressive, disrupting other wildlife species and their activity patterns. They can also lose or fail to develop the skills necessary for survival in favour of begging.

• Impact on Prey Populations: Feeding can put pressure on prey populations, impacting the entire food web. This can lead to cascading effects that affect the ecosystem balance.

• Altered Social Dynamics:  Feeding can alter the social dynamics within populations and may lead to changes in territoriality, mating behaviours, and social hierarchies among foxes.

• Altered Breeding and Development: Stable food sources can lead to earlier breeding seasons, larger litter sizes, higher offspring survival rates and changes in physical development.

• Altered Mating Behavior: Foxes that are regularly fed may establish territories closer to humans, which can change their mating dynamics and population structure.

• Increased Population Density: Concentrating foxes around feeding sites can lead to higher population densities than would naturally be supported in the area, and increases competition.

• Increased Inbreeding: Artificially boosted populations may experience inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity, decreasing fitness and increasing susceptibility to mutations and congenital diseases within the population.

• Disruption of Dispersal Patterns: Regular feeding can disrupt natural dispersal patterns of young foxes, leading to increased foxes remaining in the vicinity and not dispersing come dispersal season.

Overall, while supplemental feeding may initially appear beneficial for fox populations by supporting increased reproduction and survival, it can also have profound negative impacts on population dynamics and ecosystem health, increasing the risk of health problems, disease transmission, habitat degradation, increased mortality, and potential domestication. Over time, this can disrupt natural balance and leads to changes that impacts the whole ecosystem.

Wildlife Abuse, Exploitation and Commodification

Social media images depicting wild foxes begging for food or being fed in unethical ways can create a cycle of increasing exploitation and commodification that harms nature and the animals involved. When these images go viral, they often elicit emotional responses and sympathy from the viewers and can create an increased drive for others to imitate the behaviour.

This is especially true if the unethical feeding practices are not immediately recognized by the audience, the narrative presented alongside the images may frame the situation as a call for support or donations to 'help' the animals involved, supporting that person in doing more of this harmful behaviour. Unlike in other countries, wildlife rescues in the UK are not regulated and anyone can set up a wildlife rescue from their own home, at any time, without any knowledge or experience of foxes at all.

This creates plenty of opportunity for a deceptive guise of conservation or rescue efforts, when in reality, the animals are being exploited for personal gain. By soliciting attention, likes, shares and funds under false or misunderstood pretenses, these accounts capitalize on the suffering of wildlife, turning it into a marketable commodity, one that often requires daily interaction from the foxes they photograph and film.

As a result, the true needs of the foxes and our need to address the root causes of their habitat degradation and the solutions for that, are neglected in favour of profiting from promoting their dependence or distress. This cycle perpetuates further exploitation and harm to wildlife, undermining genuine conservation efforts and perpetuating a harmful narrative that exploits nature for financial or personal gain.

Fox Feeding Guidelines

It is always best not to feed wild foxes and to plant native, unless there is a medical need to do so. You can also leave water, though it is much better to build a pond wildlife can safely access for drinking. When feeding foxes, it is for their welfare that you must ensure you are aware of the following:

We know from studies into fox diets that up to 18% of an urban foxes diet can consist of human food waste, that they weigh around 4-8kg on average and that they need around 120 calories/kg of bodyweight/day for maintenance in a thermoneutral environment. 

So we can infer from this, that if a fox is being fed <70g of appropriate foods every 2-3 days, it is unlikely to be making them dependent on you or impacting on their health and behaviour in any meaningful way. Anything above this is not supplementary feeding and can increase habituated behaviours and wildlife conflict.

When encountering foxes, always remember:

1. Do No Harm

• Don't seek or reinforce a foxes attention or interaction with food.

• Take special care not to impact cubs at weaning season.

• Know the signs of stress and overconfidence in foxes.

• Ensure a heightened level of awareness of your impact on them.

2. Keep Them Wild

• Only feed foxes when there is a welfare need to do so.

• Avoid making them dependent, especially cubs.

• Honor their wildness and allow them space and privacy.

• Be neither friend nor foe, ensuring you deter boldness.

3. Feed Responsibly

• Never hand feed foxes or feed them in the home.

• Do not feed in a way that will change the fox's behaviour.

• Feed only supplemental amounts in a safe and ethical manner.

• Know what foxes eat naturally and how much food is too much.

Canid-safe, parasite-busting, immune-boosting, prey-supporting plants that will bring foxes and other wildlife to your garden:

Dandelion, Broadleaf Plantain, Milk Thistle, Chamomile, Fennel, Turmeric, Chicory, Chervil, Carrot, Celeriac, Pumpkin, Wild Oats, Barley, Rye, Hibiscus, Blackberry, Raspberry, Rosehip, Wild Strawberry, Blackcurrants, Apple, Cherries, Pear, Plum, Oak, Damson, Dates, Figs, Blueberry, Mulberry, Gooseberry, Juniper, Elderberry, Coriander, Parsley, Rosemary, Thyme, Sage, Peppermint, Sweet Basil, Lemon Balm, Sunflower, Valerian and Dill.

For more information on supporting foxes and wildlife with plants, visit:

• Red fox interaction with other species: plants and invertebrates

• Red foxes enhance long-term tree growth

• Wildlife depends on oaks, acorns

• Wild plants edible in the UK

• Fifteen grasses for wildlife

• Planning a wildlife garden design

• How to make a shrub garden for wildlife

• How to make a wildlife pond

• Go wild for worms (a fox staple)

• Using a camera trap in your garden

• Wildlife recording code of conduct

Purchasing food to feed foxes is not good for foxes and not sustainable for the planet. However, a fully functional and thriving wildlife habitat, however small, will bring the neighbourhood wildlife to your garden regularly, without fail. You won't be disappointed with all the natural behaviours and healthy animals you will see, and you wont need to habituate them to benefit from their presence. It is worth the time and investment!

Conclusion

The negative impacts of feeding wild foxes are vast, ranging from altered behaviours and disrupted population dynamics to increased disease transmission and habitat degradation. When considered with the phenomenon of hybridization with escaped silver foxes, the release of increasing numbers of captive-raised rescue cubs each year (with more and more taken in and released by unqualified 'home rescues') and the shrinking availability of supportive habitats, it becomes evident why foxes are becoming bolder and are seemingly self-domesticating. It takes under 10 generations to cultivate domesticated behavioural traits in red foxes.

As humans continue to encroach upon natural habitats and alter ecosystems, it's crucial to recognize the unintended consequences of our interactions with wildlife and strive for practices that promote the health and resilience of both wild populations and their environments.

If you truly want to help foxes, provide a safe space for them to be wild, with all the natural resources they require to do that, not as handouts, but in a functional and safe environment, abundant in the flora and fauna a fox needs to survive, where humans respect their wildness and watch from a respectful distance, without interfering with their lives.

It is exceptionally easy for any human to tame a wild fox with food, this is our power over life on Earth, we must not abuse it. If your wild fox neighbours run away at the sight of you or treat your presence as if you were a tree, if they display natural behaviours not domesticated pet behaviours, you have got the balance right!

Keeping Wildlife Wild: Coexisting with Urban Red Foxes

An example of a novel coat mutation: The white blaze is often a signal of domestication in many species (National Fox Welfare Society).

Fox Feeder P@rn Examples

What do you think of this behaviour? Where urban foxes are 'recruited' with handouts and fox feeders compete with each other to show how much 'love' they can impart 'their' foxes or how much 'trust' from them they have gained...

Silver "foxes are not pets" but look at the "backyard puppy" I've been taming!

One of which appears to be a red NARF or hybrid..

If a rescue is providing diagnosis, treatment and advice, then why are they buying the cheapest they can find online and are they wrongfully claiming it is for the pet for the prescription??

environment.ec.europa.eu

Issue 608: Red foxes are ingesting closantel, a veterinary drug. A study suggests that it is useful to monitor red foxes for veterinary residues in the environment as they are at risk of developing drug-resistant parasites.

Is Flea Treatment Polluting the Environment?

"In a recent PDSA study they collected data, reporting 10.2 million dogs in the UK and 11.1 million cats in the UK. If a large part of this population is receiving dewormers frequently, the irresponsible use of drugs can generate a significant impact on different populations important for the environmental balance. 

Research has found that imidacloprid and fipronil are highly toxic in small amounts to invertebrates. As a result, these species have been dying out. Many of them were part of the food chain off fish and birds, affecting those ecosystems as well. 

Although some countries have taken steps to ban these products, many have not made a start, so some advice I can give to colleagues around the world are:  

• Be aware of what we are giving to our patients. 

• Try to stop using broad-spectrum dewormers. 

• Research which types of products do not pose a risk to the environment and which ones are available in your market.  

• Explain to pet owners that pets living indoors are less likely to contract parasites. 

• Know the ‘hot spot areas’ of different parasites in the country to know what to treat with. 

• Instead of dosing every month or every three months with a chemical, recommend owners to do a worm egg count to see if they need treatment.  

• In winter, as it is a low season, certain products can be reduced, and more specific treatments can be given. "

A final note...

Images screenshotted from FB Fox Groups.