No Need To Feed Nature Provides!
Someone on this original post asked "But what if they live in an area that their natural food & habitat is continually being destroyed/developed by increasing humans population?"
There is something called the Prey-Predator Ratio.
Basically, if you have an area where prey animals such as rats, rabbits, etc move into to feed then that attracts predators. This is most noticeable where people put up bird feeders to attract small birds but the number of birds attract predators such as hawks. Coyotes finding prey animal numbers dropping begin to move out of an area to search for prey and they are not solely carnivorous but like foxes will eat berries, etc..
A wild canid is not going to starve and there tends to be plenty of road kill -in the UK badgers were seen returning to setts over a period and they each carried a rabbit -it turns out that they were picking up road-kill. We may see similar in the UK with foxes.
In areas with coyotes it is always best to scare them off because a lot of complaints leads to "lethal management" to "avoid possible human conflict". I am waiting to hear back about the situation regarding jackals in Europe. In India many villages have a local jackal pack and they are handy when it comes to ridding waste areas of rats and in some places the jackals are treated almost as shared pets. It is a matter of culture and local attitudes.
When myxomatosis hit the UK badly (I hope the person who introduced this has a good burn up in hell) and foxes began starving. You see similar with other types of wildlife such as lynx that depend on mountain hares. It is the Prey and Predator ratio and plenty of prey means that breeding can take place while at times of low prey breeding is delayed.
With the UK we have seen the rise of feeders -anecdotally it seems that fox feeders were probably also active but on the quiet in the 19th century.- and there is in some cases a great deal of overfeeding and this seems purely driven by the need to get likes on social media with photographs and videos. Some of the foxes are what would be classed as badly obese. Other feeders place out huge piles of food for foxes and badgers and, again, this is purely for social media. There are people who are hand feeding foxes and badgers and one person even sits next to a badger sett entrance to feed and photograph badgers "they only come out to me" I have heard so often and it is not a "get out of gaol" card. It is abuse of wildlife for personal social satisfaction.
There are feeders who supplement fox diets and this helps when it comes to treating wild foxes for mange (medication) as well as pain relief and antibiotic administration. Vets have very little interest in wildlife as it does not bring in money and most still refuse to give "first treatment" to injured wildlife which they are supposed to do. Treating in the wild IF you know what you are doing is far more preferable to trapping, transporting, handling and then later releasing -that all adds stress which can badly affect an animal.
So feeding urban foxes is a grey area on either side of which are the Good and the Bad feeders. Foxes are wild so should always be kept wary of humans and when they become habituated to humans is the point that they are in danger from people with an anti fox (and badger) attitude. Like coyotes and jackals the fox will not starve and is supposed to look lithe and it is not a sign of hunger. Foxes need to chase and catch prey such as rats in the city so need to twist and turn. "It looks starving! Feed it!" is another comment thing you will commonly see on fox groups and this shows the most basic ignorance from "fox lovers" as they know nothing about foxes.
One comment shows a typical idiot mentality "I would sooner have rats in my garden than a fox!" That is such a dim-witted comment all you can say in response is "Good luck with your rats". Foxes, like the coyote and jackal, will be the best pest controller you can get for free and there is no risk of a pet cat, dog, hedgehog or badger getting secondary rodenticide poisoning from eating a poisoned rat -birds of prey are also dying from secondary poisoning daily.
Canids are not stupid and will adapt and learn and in countries such as the United States where "lethal management" is always seen as the easiest and best action, scaring off coyotes may well save their lives.
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