An exploding fox population is causing huge amounts of damage in urban and rural areas of the ACT and New South Wales, according to park rangers, poultry enthusiasts and farmers.

It has forced authorities to step up their campaign to control the pests.

Native animals, small livestock in rural areas and backyard chickens in urban areas have been among the victims of the cunning predator.

Chris Condon, from Territory and Municipal Services (TAMS), said control efforts had been expanded in an attempt to limit the damage being done by the European red fox.

"There has been a three-fold increase just from landholders that have requested baits from us," he said.

Mr Condon said native wildlife had also been suffering.

"They'll quite happily get an echidna if they can get it onto its back," he said.

"With these good seasons there has been plenty of seed, plenty of growth, so there has been lots of food around for small mammals."

After hearing the distinct bark of foxes regularly around their Ainslie home, Canberra historian Matthew Higgins and artist Stephanie Haygarth began attempting to film the foxes with night-vision cameras.

After many attempts, their cameras successfully captured two different foxes investigating their fruit trees and outdoor barbeque.

The ACT Government will place close to 3,000 fox baits near active fox dens in nature reserves this year.

Rangers have created the baits by drying a doughnut of kangaroo meat, and filling it with a sweet strawberry filling laced with a tiny dose of the poison 1080.

"1080 is very good in the fact that it is very target specific at such low doses to kill a fox," Mr Condon said.

But the poison 1080 can not be used on smaller rural holdings, or in the city where there is an estimated average of 15 foxes per square kilometre.

"We are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to fox control in the urban area," he said.

"About the only control is the roads."

TAMS officer Chris Condon with fox bait (kangaroo jerky and strawberry ice-cream topping laced with 1080 poison). ( ABC News: Maddi Easterbrook )

'Foxed' backyard poultry losses

Poultry enthusiasts like Bruce Patterson have expressed increasing frustration over the largely uncontrolled invasion of foxes across urban Canberra.

"Numbers around Canberra are at a peak, they are everywhere," Mr Patterson said.

Poultry enthusiast Bruce Patterson with an old English game creele rooster he is prepping for the Canberra Show. ( ABC News: Maddi Easterbrook )

"They just help themselves to the neighbourhood chooks, my neighbours lost chooks recently.

"I have seen them use rubbish bins to jump over fences, cement blocks to get up onto something else and then jump over a fence."

Aileen Tong, of the group Canberra Backyard Poultry, said she had been more fortunate than other members who had lost entire flocks to foxes.

"There does certainly seem to be an increase in the number of fox sightings," she said.

"We do get reports of people being 'foxed' reasonably regularly."

Fox 'bounty' called for

Poultry enthusiasts, like Mr Patterson, have called for other fox control techniques to be introduced.

"The options are to put a bounty on foxes, even if it was only $10 a skin. It would make a difference," he said.

Ms Tong said some members of Canberra Backyard Poultry had expressed support for fox trapping across Canberra.

But Chris Condon of TAMS rejected both suggestions as unworkable.

"You can't run around shooting foxes in the urban area, trapping programs are very intensive," he said.

"There is not the staff or the resources to be able to undertake a program like that."

Mr Condon said with plenty of food and few predators foxes would continue to enjoy free rein across the city.

Ms Tong has urged all poultry enthusiasts and small livestock owners to be prepared.

"It is the responsibility of chicken owners to fox-proof or become fox resistant," she said.