Cities increasingly recognise urban wildlife as part of their ecosystems, creating policies to protect foxes, birds, hedgehogs, and other animals in human-dominated landscapes.
Urban animals face unique stressors: traffic, light pollution, noise, habitat fragmentation, and direct persecution. Progressive city governments are responding with wildlife-friendly policies including hedgehog highways, reduced nighttime lighting, and bird-safe building codes. Integrating welfare thinking into urban planning and development is an emerging and important frontier.