Learning more about urban foxes

P.E.I. residents will now know more about the urban fox population thanks to a study by UPEI Masters student Hailey Lambe. Her thesis: Movement patterns, home range and den site selection of urban red foxes on Prince Edward Island Canada looked at the habits of foxes in Charlottetown. Firstly, Lambe said that foxes are seen in a better light on P.E.I. than in other parts of the world. 

"Foxes on P.E.I. aren't associated with threatening diseases such as rabies. So in other areas of the world, rabies are transmitted via the fox population quite frequently and so humans associate the foxes with a risk to their health."

Over the past three years Lambe used GPS to track six foxes and learn more about what they are looking for in a habitat. A big part of the study was citizen science, where volunteers helped to track sightings and den locations. 

"Citizen science was imperative to our study," said Lambe.

"By asking citizens to contribute, we're basically increasing our observational power. So that extends into backyards or areas where people can't frequent," she explained. 

Prefer to be out in nature

Although you may see a lot of the little canines around residential areas, the study found that they still prefer to have their homes to be in natural areas.  If they are in an urban centre, they will look for the next best thing, somewhere with lower human interaction, such as a golf course. So you may be asking then why would the fox want to be in a residential or urban area. Lambe said it mostly comes down to food. 

"Foxes are very opportunistic. So they're also a generalist species which means that they will eat this but they will also eat that. So you can see them eating anything in a natural setting, insects, invertebrates. You can see them eating amphibians species, rodents, birds, berries, fruits anything like that," she said, adding: 

"You can imagine that in an urban setting if there's food available to them and it's easy to obtain then they're not going to exert the energy to hunt where they can kind of get an easy meal. So they're  kind of the masters of adapting to those situations." 

Taking the high road

You might have spotted foxes on the sides of roads, that's not a coincidence, it's science. Lambe suggests they like to be away from roads in order to protect their kits but not too far away. Her findings saw that once you got over 100 metres from a road the chances of finding a den decreased. That's because just like us, they use roads to travel. 

"Roads are really easy access to foraging grounds. Carnivores such as foxes tend to follow the path of least resistance they like to follow straight lines so road side ditches, they shoulder of roads really offer that," Lambe explained.

How we can live together

So, what do these findings mean for the future of the fox population? Lambe says that now that we know more about their habits and what they are looking for, it could lead to conservation measures, or ways to get them away from residential areas where they may not be wanted. 

"If we know where those areas are we may be able to protect those areas, extend those areas, encourage foxes to use the more natural setting rather than residential backyards," she said. 

 "And so if we can figure out why they're denning in an area where they're denning then we might be able to prevent them denning in residential backyards you might be able to prepare your backyard in such a way that it won't be attractive to foxes."

Lambe gave a couple of tips to deter foxes from your property. They will want to dig under barns or decks, so if you see signs of that she said to block off the entrance. She said another big attraction is any mounds of dirt such as top soil or ditches, that you could block off. And she reminded us not to feed them. 

Lambe is finished with her research but said the work will continue, the next studies will hopefully look at more specific questions to further explore  the urban fox population on the Island.

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