Red foxes have successfully colonised urban environments across Europe and Australia, creating both coexistence opportunities and welfare challenges that require evidence-based management approaches.
Urban foxes navigate a complex welfare landscape shaped by human settlement. Mange is a significant welfare disease causing prolonged suffering through intense itching, hair loss and secondary infection, and affects a substantial proportion of urban fox populations. Effective oral treatment exists and is distributed through fox welfare charities, making mange treatment one of the more accessible wildlife welfare interventions available to urban residents. Conflicts between foxes and residents rarely involve welfare justification for lethal control, which is ineffective at reducing fox numbers and imposes welfare costs on trapped and killed individuals. Coexistence approaches that manage attractants and secure vulnerable areas provide better outcomes for both foxes and residents.