Foxes living on the roof garden of Google’s new London office and what it tells us about urban ecology
...and our own prejudices
On the 9th June, the Guardian published an article titled Google battling fox incursion on roof of £1bn London office. Foxes have reportedly been exploring the major construction site for a number of years and have created homes for themselves by digging burrows in the ‘perfectly manicured grounds’ on the building’s extensive roof garden.
The article itself is a bit of a non-story. It’s well known that foxes frequent construction sites. What is more interesting is how the article is dripping with unconscious bias. It holds up a mirror to mainstream cultural views of urban ecology.
I’m critical of the article here but I’m genuinely not trying to attack the journalist or the publisher. I’m using it as a jumping off point to talk about our relationship with urban wildlife.
What’s a pest anyway?
The article opens by describing foxes as ‘one of humanity’s oldest-known menaces’, as if they are some kind of furry bubonic plague. Tellingly, a note at the bottom of the article states that the word ‘pest’ has been removed from the original article because ‘they are officially classed as wild animals, not pests or vermin’.
This note misses the larger truth: no animal is ‘officially’ a pest or vermin. These are human constructs, not scientific or legal terms. Pest/vermin is just a term that we apply to animals that appear in places and behave in ways we don’t want them to. A rat living in your attic? It must die. Slugs eating your lettuce? Prepare for chemical warfare.
No animal is evil - they just do whatever they evolved to do. Sometimes that clashes with human activities.
I do have some sympathy. The article reports that fox poo has been found on the construction site. As much of a nature lover as I am, I wouldn’t want fox poo in my place of work. Plus a construction site doesn’t sound like a safe place for a wild animal. On those grounds alone I would agree that prevention measures should be put in place to protect everyone involved (human and non-human alike).
But let’s look at the bigger picture.
Coexistence is not an option (apparently)
By treating this situation as simply a case of wildlife ‘incursion’ into the sanitised corporate world, it suggests something much more sinister: that human-animal coexistence in the city is impossible - at least not with unsanctioned animals.
The great irony is that the architects surely designed the gigantic green roof, complete with 40,000 tonnes of soil and 250 trees, in part to attract wildlife to the site. Biodiversity net gain is a requirement for all new developments in England and London has strict policies on increasing the ‘urban greening factor’ of development sites.
The thing is, these highly designed and managed forms of urban nature don’t really exist to attract self-willed nature (a phrase rewilders like to use). Google employees will surely hope to see bees and butterflies bobbing about their rooftop park. Maybe even a few songbirds. But foxes are not one of the sanctioned animals that are allowed to benefit from green roofs. They belong out of sight in bins and wastelands. At least that seems to be the underlying logic of the Guardian article.
I’m not hopelessly idealistic. The truth is that the foxes could never stay on the roof long term. Once construction finishes, they won’t be able to get past security and will need to abandon their burrows-with-a-view.
At this point it’s worth considering the whole situation from the foxes’ perspective. Why were they so quick to colonise a construction site and roof garden anyway?
To answer this we need to delve into several hundred years of landscape change in Britain and some fascinating ecological phenomena.
Why there are so many urban foxes
Urban foxes are a common site in many cities around the world. But the street-wise and mangy urban fox is firmly embedded in the British cultural psyche (perhaps best exemplified by the Mighty Boosh character the crack fox).
The number of urban foxes in Britain is estimated at 150,000, a number that has been increasing even while the national population has declined. In other words, more foxes are moving into cities. There are three main reasons for this:
Rural habitat loss pushing foxes into cities,
Foxes being naturally adaptable to human society (synanthropic), and
A phenomenon called mesopredator release (I will explain, I promise).
Firstly, foxes are highly adaptable creatures and will find a way to live in many habitats. But they likely prefer woodland and grassland habitats where they can hunt effectively. Woodlands have been declining for centuries and 90% of lowland grassland has disappeared in just the last 100 years - largely converted to intensive farmland. Clearly this has spelled trouble for a whole range of wildlife, including foxes.
So, with this push out of the countryside, many foxes have been attracted into towns and cities where they can earn an easy living scavenging food waste and hunting urban rodents. They can do this - in contrast to more specialised species - because they are synanthropes. By virtue of their adaptability, they can live alongside and benefit from close contact with humans. They’re not fussy about what they eat or where they make shelter. With habitats in cities being limited, groups of foxes (technically called ‘skulks’) compete for territory, which is why they can be found living out of unlikely places like school grounds and abandoned sites.
Other examples of synanthropes are feral pigeons (those great urban scavengers) and swifts (who nest in building eaves).
Finally, fox numbers may be artificially high in Britain because of mesopredator release. Foxes are mid-food-chain predators (mesopredators) whose populations are partly kept in check by the presence of apex predators like wolves and eagles. Apex predators may not eat foxes directly but they compete for territory and some prey. This limits fox reproduction to an extent. If apex predators are hunted to extinction, as they were in Britain, then this control on the mesopredator numbers is ‘released’ and fox populations can increase. This puts extra pressure on foxes to find new habitats and adapt to human environments, pushing many into towns and cities.
Bringing it all full circle
This mix of factors helps to explain why there are so many urban foxes in Britain and why they wouldn’t think twice about making a home on the construction site of a starchitect-designed office building in central London.
We created the conditions the led to this situation. Foxes are just trying to survive and adapt to a changing world. Maybe we can learn to show more compassion and design opportunities for coexistence in the urban fabric.