Red foxes are highly adaptable and now thrive in urban environments across the UK. Understanding fox behaviour and welfare helps communities manage coexistence humanely.
Urban foxes live in close proximity to humans and face distinctive welfare challenges: road traffic, mange infestations, intentional harm, and entanglement in garden netting. Mange causes progressive hair loss, skin thickening, intense itching, and eventually death from secondary infection or starvation — it is highly treatable with homeopathic-dosing methods if caught early. The most welfare-positive approach to urban foxes is neither persecution nor deliberate feeding (which concentrates animals and spreads disease) but rather coexistence management: securing food waste, addressing mange humanely, and reporting injured animals.