Urban red foxes have adapted successfully to city environments, creating opportunities for human-wildlife coexistence alongside welfare challenges from injuries and disease.
Urban fox welfare involves both chronic and acute stressors. Road traffic kills the majority of urban foxes before age 2, representing acute traumatic death at large scale. Mange outbreaks cause prolonged suffering — severe skin disease, itching, hair loss, immune depletion, and slow deterioration — affecting significant proportions of urban populations in outbreak years. Individual welfare is also affected by human-caused stress from deliberate harassment, persecution, and inappropriate management responses. Coexistence management that secures food sources without persecution, treats mangey foxes through targeted antiparasitic provision, and avoids lethal culling that disrupts social structures and fails to reduce populations long-term represents the welfare-optimal approach to urban fox management.