SPCA to step in and save local fox pups

By MARC LALONDE

marc.lalonde@transcontinental.ca

When Lindsay Burkhart, a Vanier College animal-health sciences student went walking in the wooded lot just west of Fairview Pointe Claire shopping centre late last month, she happened upon a grisly discovery.

Two adult foxes were hung up by their necks, having been caught cruelly in snare traps that pull tighter as the animal struggles. For Burkhart, a self-proclaimed 'country girl' from Les Coteaux who lives in Dollard des Ormeaux during the school year, the discovery was shocking.

Even more shocking for the 20-year-old was the discovery of two fox pups, ostensibly orphaned when their parents were trapped. Burkhart has been bringing the pups food "pretty much every day," since April 25, she said.

"I don't know who would do something like this," she said. "It's inhumane, and I was absolutely shocked by what I saw. There's no reason in the world that I can think of that would make someone do that. It's unbelievable that someone would so something like this."

The lot the foxes call home was sold by John Abbott College to a shopping-centre developer last March. The Ste. Anne de Bellevue CEGEP unloaded the mostly-treed land that sits on the Highway 40 service road between Reno-Depot and Merck Frosst for over $30 million.

But no development of the property has yet begun, leading observers to speculate over the trappers' motivation.

"It is springtime, which means the pups are nursing, and now they've been left without parents. Someone did this, and just left (the parents) there to rot away. Someone did this just to be cruel, and that's just crazy," she said.

For the last two weeks, Burkhart has been plying the pups with food and water and has caught a couple of glimpses of the pint-sized babies.

SPCA Montreal executive director Pierre Barnoti said snare traps can occasionally fall into the legal category, but are usually illegal in urban areas.

"Some snare traps are legal, but that is very rare," Barnoti said. "To put a snare there just to catch the animals for no reason is basically cruelty and is completely inhumane," he said.

Barnoti said the SPCA has the means and methods available to trap the pups and rehabilitate them in a wooded environment that isn't slated for development, as their current home is.

"Foxes aren't interested in humans, and their numbers are dwindling, especially on Montreal Island, because there has been so much development that the forests they call home are being developed," he said.

The pups are currently residing in a hole a stone's throw from Hervey Street and Reno-Depot several hundred metres into the forest.

Barnoti said an SPCA team will be dispatched to take care of the pups as soon as they can determine their location.