Simcoe County Emergency Animal Response has rescued four sick foxes over the past month using crafty methods
If you see a wild animal wandering around Collingwood, who are you gonna call? Simcoe County Emergency Animal Response (SCEAR).
Over the past few weeks, Collingwood’s community social media pages have exploded with news of fox sightings in different areas of town. Since then, SCEAR has responded and has managed to capture four foxes, possibly a family, they believe have mange.
Today, the foxes have been taken in at various wildlife sanctuaries and are on a road to treatment and recovery.
Erin Longo, response supervisor with SCEAR, is based in Wasaga Beach and responded to the first Collingwood report.
“When it comes to foxes, it can be a little bit time-consuming because … we need a lot of sightings in a certain area to be able to place a trap and understand their routine,” said Longo in an interview. “I worked with some residents who would send us daily emails on where they saw the fox.”
“We quickly realized there was more than one,” she said.
SCEAR is a volunteer organization acting as a transportation service for wild and domestic injured animals, serving all of Simcoe County. It formally launched in December 2025, and is registered as a formal non-profit organization.
Volunteers from the agency respond to calls of animals in crisis and deliver them to local rehabilitation centres, veterinarians and animal shelters. There is a three-member board of directors and five volunteers.
Longo said many people having home security cameras these days made it easier to track the fox movements.
“Once we (understood) the routine, we set a trap. Foxes are smart animals. When you put something new in their surroundings, they want to stay away,” she said. “I baited the traps with sardines. They’re nice and stinky.”
Longo visited the traps daily. About a week after setting them, she and another volunteer managed to corner the first fox in a culvert. She said it made the job easier, as there were only two access points.
“My volunteer grabbed the first one. A similar situation happened with the second one, within 10 days of the first,” she said. “Then, we got a call from one of the residents saying they were able to trap one in the culvert. We went to assess, and there were actually two more.”
“One of our volunteers actually ended up crawling through the culvert to push it out the other side,” said Longo. She said they haven’t had further reports of foxes in Collingwood since the last one.
Longo said Collingwood isn’t the only town in Simcoe County encountering foxes, with others collected by the organization in Midhurst and Barrie as well.
SCEAR works with Procyon Wildlife in Beeton, Bear Creek Wildlife Sanctuary in Barrie, Shades of Hope Wildlife Refuge in Pefferlaw and the National Wildlife Centre in Caledon.
“Different rehabs specialize in different animals, so we usually reach out to whoever is the specialist in that (animal),” Longo explained.
While Longo couldn’t commit to whether the four foxes they trapped in Collingwood had mange, the Bear Creek Exotic Animal Sanctuary posted on social media on Aug. 22 that five foxes had recently been brought into their care with severe sarcoptic mange, with all five being treated with antibiotics. The sanctuary is accepting donations for the foxes’ care, which can be sent by etransfer to [email protected].
Mange is a contagious skin disease marked by eczema/inflammation and loss of hair/fur, affecting domestic animals, caused by a parasitic mite.
“I would say this is a particularly bad year for mange,” Longo said. “Sometimes, when it gets far along, it impairs them from hunting, so they can get emaciated. A fox cannot survive the winter without their fur.”
Longo noted that SCEAR typically doesn’t release information on the health status of the animals they capture and send to rehabilitation centres until they are fully recovered and released back into the wild.
“We will be in touch with the public specifically in Collingwood because it was so publicized, once we have more information,” she said.
SCEAR is surviving on donations, which can be made through the scear.ca website. The organization communicates news through the group’s Facebook page.