A leading voice has added his weight to demands for greater controls on urban foxes after twin sisters were reportedly attacked by a fox in their bedroom in North London.
The London Mayor Boris Johnson has called on councils to focus their attentions on pest control after a fox was reported to have attacked two nine month old girls in their home in Hackney.
Lola and Isabella Koupparis were reportedly attacked on Saturday night as they slept in their cots in an upstairs bedroom in the three storey family home in Hackney, and suffered severe and shocking injuries.
The twins were rushed to hospital where they remained in a special care unit.
The fox apparently entered the house through an open ground floor door before attacking the twins in the upstairs room and causing nasty injury to the face and arms.
The incident has shocked parents the length and breadth of the UK where foxes, especially in urban areas appear to be rampant.
It is becoming clear to many city dwellers that urban foxes are now extremely confident in their city environment, seen walking down pavements at night, in parks in broad daylight, and are routine visitors to suburban gardens.
For many they are an attractive fixture of English cities, forming a connection for people with the natural landscape but the incident in which two babies were seriously injured by what is now thought to be an immature fox has reminded many fox lovers that for others foxes are vermin.
Estimates suggest that between 10,000 to 30,000 urban red foxes live in London alone and there are hundreds of thousands nationally, with a density of around 28 per square mile living in urban areas across the country.
The London mayor Boris Johnson has joined forces with some media commentators who say councils need to get together and look at how they can tackle foxes.
“It is right that boroughs should focus on their duties for pest control because as romantic and cuddly as a fox is it is also a pest,” said London Mayor Boris Johnson.
The current theory about the attacks on the London twins is that the injuries could have been caused by a fox cub, a young immature fox that found a way into the house and then became trapped and felt scared. Common theory says that foxes who are extremely shy of humans ordinarily will only become aggressive if they feel threatened.
Previous fox attacks on human are thought to be extremely rare and possibly non existent.
The controversy has widened with leading wildlife experts casting doubts on claims that the baby twins found injured in their cot were attacked by a fox.
Urban wildlife expert John Bryant said such an attack was extremely rare.
“I have only ever heard of two cases in my 40 years of dealing with foxes, one of which turned out to be a German Shepherd dog and the other a cat,” said Mr Bryant.
Foxes started colonising British cities in the 1930s and have been thought to be present in urban areas in large numbers for nearly 80 years.
In a recent poll of nearly 4,000 households, 65.7 per cent of people said they liked urban foxes, 25.8 per cent had no strong views either way and only 8.5 per cent said they actively disliked foxes.
Foxes are already a red hot debate in the UK. After centuries of tradition allowing fox hunting with horses and dogs, a Labour Government led to the passing of the Hunting Act 2004 which made hunting with dogs unlawful in England and Wales from 18 February 2005.
The question marks over the future of the urban fox is likely to create a fierce debate in the UK, a celebrated nation of animal lovers, where for many the handsome fox is seen as a symbol of freedom and very much a component of Britain’s wildlife while for others as a pest, especially among the rural hunting communities, and now for many parents a potential danger for small children, especially during summer when windows are often left open.
Lola and Isabella Koupparis’s injuries could leave the twins scarred for life by the fox attack. Isabella, who suffered severe arm injuries, has been moved to Great Ormond Street hospital. Her sister, Isabella, who received facial injuries, is still at the Royal London Hospital.
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2 Comments for this entry
Mark K
First, we are not sure that the attack was by a fox. The only other 2 instances of apparent fox attacks on humans in the last 100 years in the UK turned out to be a cat and a German Shepherd.
Second, there have been 1,500 serious injuries from domestic animals in the UK in the last 10 years. There were more serious injurious from space hoppers every month in the 1970′s than there have been to from foxes to humans in the past century.
You don’t have to be an animal lover to realize that this hype is absolutely ludicrous.
Babz
You’ve said it yourself, hunting was banned from 2005, it is now 2010 and how many attacks on people by foxes have we heard of? Yup, one or two! How many children have been killed or savaged by the household dog? In 2009 dogs mauled 1,942 under 10 year olds so badly they needed hospital treatment a rise of 14% on 2008. Google it if you don’t believe me, the facts are readily available.
So, if we’re going to have (to quote the PM) a “knee jerk reaction” about foxes then maybe we should have one about dogs, guns, mobile phone wielding drivers, sun beds etc etc etc. What happened was terrible but this mass hysteria is wrong.