To tell my neighbour to stop doing this?

[curiousgeorgie]

My neighbours are both quite elderly, and I only really see them from my window when they're in the garden.

They are obsessed with the foxes.

They have ceramic plates on their decking and they fill them a few times a day with meat, bread & cheese for the foxes to eat.

There are bloody loads of them!! They are in my garden everyday so I worry about DD playing out there, and they also go in our bins and mess with the rubbish almost every night... Every morning I pick up all sorts of rubbish from my front lawn and driveway and am sick of it.

I want to knock on the door and ask them to stop feeding them which is bringing more and more of them here...

AIBU?

If the neighbours suddenly stop or cut down the amount drastically, what will happen in the short term with a large group of hungry foxes with no food supply? Is it worth seeking advice from specialists?

I would think that the neighbours could be spoken to by environmental health as they are causing a public nuisance, in much the same way people who vastly overfeed birds do.

Secondly, I think getting a pest controller in to cull the foxes (which I'm fairly sure is perfectly legal) would also be wise as these foxes will suffer terribly if they have never learned to be self sufficient and their food stops. Getting the foxes culled would probably stop the neighbours feeding them too, as they'll realise attracting foxes will lead to the foxes deaths. I've seen foxes culled by a competent marksman before. It is instant, they have no idea.

Much as I love wildlife, this isn't wildlife. Its semi domesticated foxes in numbers far larger than can naturally be supported. They'll be likely to continue getting bolder. Disease will spread faster between them and they'll be likely to inbreed and fight due to overcrowding while attracted to the one small area.

Obviously culling the ones in your garden, not when in next doors...that would be bad form!

My understanding is that culling does not work because the are territorial and if you 'free' a territory by getting rid of the previous 'owners' new foxes will move in.
Not encouraging ie not feeding seems sensible to me.

YY my understanding was if you removed say 25% of a fox population then they would just breed more to get the numbers up to the level the food available could sustain. To slow down the numbers then the feeding needs to be reduced and then stopped. If done slowly enough I would imagine the foxes would go back to their hunting and not have the next years litter as there was less food available

but foxes are wild animals, cats and dogs are domesticated. They behave in totally different ways

Yes dogs maul people and foxes don't. That's a major difference. (we know of one possible exception to that, but I expect you can find a case where a budgie injured someone too if you look hard enough)

As for banning all animals you should have been able to tell from the context that I meant ones that cause problems, especially for neighbours who never got a say in it.

When someone buys a cat they think "oh I don't mind it shitting in my garden and as for the neighbours they will just have to put up with it". Just like these people feeding foxes they don't think they have a duty to consider the consequences for other people.

So I'm ok with telling off the fox feeding neighbours as long as you tell the cat owners too.

As for killing the foxes the RSPCA have an opinion on that.

Some people suggest that the answer is to relocate or destroy foxes. However, this will simply encourage foxes from other areas to move in and take their place. Moving foxes from one area to another is not appropriate or considered humane – foxes moved to another area are unlikely to survive long and may spread diseases.

In the past, destruction of foxes has sometimes been undertaken by local authorities but has then been stopped due to greater awareness of the animals, as well as the ineffectiveness and expense of such policies. This approach also conflicts with those who gain a great deal of pleasure from seeing foxes and enjoy the idea of wildlife thriving in a seemingly hostile urban environment.

Where we are, London, I wish the foxes were afraid, but they are not, I had one in my porch going through our rubbish bag, nothing I did or shouted would make it leave

When we discovered they had built a den in the back of our garden it meant that I could not leave the back door open as they would wander in, which meant that the DC could not use the garden unless I went out with them as the back door was too stiff for them to open themselves.

So yes in certain areas they do not have any fear at all and cause massive problems.