Urban foxes have adapted successfully to city environments but face unique welfare challenges from traffic, disease, mange, and human conflict. Coexistence strategies benefit both foxes and people.
Urban foxes face welfare challenges that are largely products of human urban environments. Mange causes severe, progressive suffering and can be treated in accessible urban populations. Traffic mortality is significant but can be reduced through wildlife-sensitive infrastructure design. Coexistence approaches that treat foxes as neighbors rather than pests are both more humane and more effective than lethal control.