Community Action - Congratulations!

(Picture and story supplied by Malavan)

Here is the Big Society in action. 40 households and businesses from the area of Hillfield Road, Aldred Road, Orestes Mews and Mill Lane, West Hampstead, banded together to try to move foxes off our patch. No foxes were harmed in this action. No politicians or council officials were involved either. Whether our actions will succeed, we cannot be sure, but we certainly came up trumps as a community. Well done everyone!

There are more wonderful pictures of this community action - look on

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25069535@N06/sets/72157628020618514/

And this is from the Hillfield and Aldred Residents Association newsletter:

There has been a fox problem in the gardens on the southside of Hillfield Road and up Aldred Road, worst where the gardens back on the shops on Mill Lane and the area is enclosed. Individual houses had been trying to tackle it over the early summer, but to no avail. By early September rather than continue to act alone a group decided to get together and decide the best course of action to take. After some research (including contacting the RSPCA) they contacted Fox-a-gon. Fox-a-gon are fox deterrence specialists who explained that foxes can't be just be caught and moved into a new territory (firstly it is probably already another foxes' territory and secondly even if it isn't the translocated foxes don't know where to find food and may starve). Rather, Fox-a-gon's approach is to encourage the foxes to move to a more suitable territory by blocking up known fox dens and making their life more difficult (i.e. reducing easy sources of food and water). That and installing water scarecrows. Fox-agon inspected our area to look for signs of foxes and came across several fox dens, but annoying none currently occupied, although some showing signs of recent occupation.I'm jumping ahead a bit because the search narrowed to a back garden behind 43 Mill Lane. This 'garden' was overgrown with vegetation and years of accumulated junk. In order for Fox-a-gon to investigate the garden had to cleared first so last Sunday a group of HARRA residents got together to clear the junk (by doing it ourselves we saved ourselves several hundred pounds). The landlord of the site had refused to do anything about it. It turned out to be 1.7 tonnes of rubbish all moved by hand up onto Hillfield Road, so that it could be taken away. (By the way at the end the group had grown to over 40 households, which isn't a bad show of community spirit).

We'd just like to say "Congratulations everyone!"