Love them or hate them, the urban fox has become very comfortable living in Dublin. Some see them as vermin. Others may very well invite them into their garden with food and water. Either way, they’re now as common in Dublin City as burrito bars.

Very little data has been collected - other than the anecdotal - about the urban fox. Simply put, bar sneaking into people’s gardens and abandoned properties, they are a pretty elusive bunch to track.

Foxpop is a new initiative attempting to gather more information on the mammal in Dublin City through social media. Their presence is well established in the capital’s suburbs but increasingly citizens are seeing them right in the heart of the city, suggesting a new confidence in their own skin borne partially out of the public’s tolerance of them.

Through the use of a dedicated website and social media, Foxpop aims to collect information, as well as opinions, on the urban fox in Dublin.

Media analysis of the mammal has been mixed in recent months. The call by London Mayor Boris Johnson to cull the urban fox in his city, after one entered someone’s home and bit an infant’s finger off, has understandably drawn negative attention towards the species. Closer to home one report suggested that Dublin-based foxes snub the Northside in favour of the leafier environs of South Dublin.

Attempts at gathering data on urban foxes have been tried in the past - through door to door surveying and through snail mail. Social media, however, opens up a brave new world for citizen science projects like this as contributors might see a fox in the city and be able to record the sighting immediately rather than having to run home and write a letter.

While verification and accuracy of sightings are both challenges associated with a project reliant on the public’s online candour (Foxpop has already received a number of sightings of hot foxes in Dublin’s night clubs and bars) valuable data is still obtainable and will ultimately contribute to the Atlas of Mammals in Ireland: a nationwide project running till 2015, through the National Biodiversity Data Centre.

If you would like to record sightings, send pictures, share stories or opinions go to:

foxpop.info

Twitter: @foxpopdublin

Facebook: foxpop