大象传媒

By Gavin Maxwell, Producer and Director for Dogs in the Wild

The fennec fox is the world’s smallest wild dog - about 20 cm tall. It’s also very shy, and it lives in small burrows somewhere in the Sahara desert! We knew it would be a challenge to film. However, the fennec’s ability to thrive in the desert environment made it top of our list of species to feature in our ‘Dogs in the Wild’ series.

When we arrived on location in Morocco, the filming of this tiny, shy canid was every bit as hard as we feared. Thanks to their large ears, the fennecs had a knack for quickly clocking us. We tried to be as quiet as we could, but the cooling fans on our cameras often gave us away!

We worked on our fieldcraft and persevered, but just when we felt our luck was turning the worst possible thing happened: we filmed a fennec fox emerging from a burrow…with a huge trap clamped around its front leg. The poor creature stumbled off over the dunes, dragging the trap with it, before we had a chance to rescue it.

Wild fennecs are captured for many reasons: the pet trade, for fur and meat, and for photo opportunities with tourists who may not know the background or legality of the scenarios they encounter. The trade in fennecs means they are classified by CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) as Appendix II: ‘species not necessarily threatened with extinction, but in which trade must be controlled in order to avoid utilization incompatible with their survival’. Fennec foxes are protected by law in Morocco and other North African countries, but the law wasn’t helping the wretched fennec we encountered.

The thought of the trapped fennec out there somewhere weighed heavily on us, but we had to persevere with our wild fennec filming nonetheless. We’d pretty much given up hope for the trapped fennec when something unexpected happened…

Our guide suddenly spotted the fennec cowering under a concrete structure on the desert’s fringe. He quickly jumped out of the car and caught it. I was able to open the trap on the fennec’s injured leg. There’s no local support or veterinary expertise for such a situation, and keeping the fennec in captivity while we figured out how best to treat it would likely cause the fennec more stress, and potential death. However our guide was able to assess the fennec’s wound, and despite the injury he felt there was a good chance it would survive, particularly in the desert environment’s dry and clean conditions. We let the fennec go, and it was able to scamper off so fast we knew this fennec would have a good chance.

Our story won’t fix the illegal trade, and the rescue itself is just a tiny drop in the ocean, but it is a drop nonetheless: hopefully it will have some resonance, and tourists on location might at least think twice before being offered supposed ‘pet’ fennecs for photo opportunities.

Meanwhile we left a remote camera with our guide: about one month after filming he sent me a still of a fennec fox in the same area. It was missing its lower front paw, but it appeared strong and healthy. It may well have been ‘our’ fennec. It’s not uncommon to see fennecs with missing paws, likely the result of botched trapping, but at least they have survived and are able to continue living in the wild - a testament to this amazing little wild dog’s adaptation to life in the desert.