A fox was found hanged by a belt on the rail bannisters outside of a central London home on 25 March in Westminster.
A source, who wishes to be anonymised, walked through Harrowby Street when they found a fox hanged by the neck on a metal banister outside of the flat.
They were taking their dog to the vet and tried to contact the police but they did not respond quickly enough for the source.
At first they believed the fox to be fake but upon closer inspection realised that it was real.
The source sent these images to the Hunt Saboteurs Association, an organisation working to save lives of animals hunted every season since 1963.
Locals were aware of this situation as Harrowby Street is a small, quiet road, and local business owners were distressed by this incident.
Ali Ali who works at Samir’s Dry Cleaners that is also on Harrowby Street said: “It was a sad incident.
“We have two cameras, but one did not work and the other was very blurry and didn’t pick it up.
“The police said it was in the middle of the night, but they don’t know who it was. The woman who found the fox didn’t know who it was.”
The police was contacted but stated that they did not have information on this case.
The Hunt Saboteurs Association published these distressing images to their Twitter page in order to bring it more attention.
The HSA campaign for hunting to be banned for good as there are currently exemptions such as in incidents of trail hunting where the flexibility of the law is taken advantage of by hunters.
Rowan Hughes of the Hunt Saboteurs Association said: “We don’t know what happened to this fox, or how their body ended up hung by the neck from a railing, but this image is sad, and horrifying.
“To us it clearly shows a disconnect between humans and animals.
“It’s not only the rural fox, illegally killed by the hunt, or snared by a gamekeeper who is at risk of cruelty from us.
“Foxes should be given protected status, so incidents like this can be properly investigated.”
The RSCPA was not contacted about this incident but have responded to it, saying: “This sounds like a very distressing incident for the finder to come across and it must have been upsetting for them.
“While some people may consider foxes a problem, many like seeing them in and consider them a vital part of the British landscape.
“A lot of people take great pleasure in seeing foxes wandering around, and enjoy the idea of wildlife thriving around them and it is very upsetting when they are killed for their presence in an area when preventative action can be taken instead.”
The spokesperson for the RSCPA explained that foxes can be deterred by removing food or shelter as would cause them to move to a different location.
Featured image by Anthony Quintano via Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. This is not the fox mentioned in the article.
