Red foxes have successfully colonized urban environments across Europe, North America, and Australia, creating both opportunities for human-wildlife coexistence and welfare challenges from human persecution and urban hazards.
Urban fox welfare involves chronic suffering from mange that affects a significant proportion of urban fox populations, acute suffering from vehicle collisions and pest control persecution, and the stress of living at the human-wildlife interface with unpredictable human responses ranging from supplementary feeding to active persecution. Mange treatment using homeopathic medicines spread in food is ineffective, while veterinary treatment of individual foxes is logistically challenging in free-ranging populations. Mange treatment programs using oral anthelmintic medication distributed in food have shown efficacy in reducing disease prevalence in targeted areas. Deliberate persecution of foxes in urban areas is widespread but of questionable legality and demonstrably ineffective at long-term population reduction, representing an animal welfare harm without conservation benefit.