Wildlife left out in cold - survey

The UK's wildlife has been left out in the cold with almost half of Britons not feeding wild animals, a survey revealed.

A third of those surveyed had also stopped encouraging them from around their homes and 34% of respondents in urban areas said their feelings about wildlife changed after the London fox maulings. In June, nine-month-old twins Lola and Isabella Koupparis were mauled by a fox as they slept in their cots at their parents' east London home.

Almost 40% of Londoners said their opinion of wild animals changed after the attacks and 20% were afraid of wildlife in their gardens.

Ted Burden, founder of the London Wildcare Trust, said: "It's no surprise that people's attitude towards wildlife has changed since the recent media attention given to foxes, but people need to remember these were isolated incidents.

"Our top tip for living side-by-side with wildlife safely is to never encourage wild animals into or too near to your home. It's fine to feed wildlife, they often rely on us. As long as people remember our simple rule, wild animals and people can live together with little impact on each other's lives."

The survey, commissioned by E1 Entertainment to celebrate the DVD release of wildlife comedy Furry Vengeance, showed that, despite the fox's bad publicity, magpies were the least popular animal.

Some 27% of people surveyed named them as their least favourite animal with 29% believing they were a menace and 19% stating their dislike was down to the fact that magpies bully and destroy the nests of other birds.

Foxes were the second least popular.

Unsurprisingly, they were least popular with those living in suburban areas (11%) and the top three reasons for this aversion were that they are a menace (22%), vicious (22%) and carry disease (17%).

The pollsters surveyed 1,007 people.