Red foxes have adapted successfully to urban environments but face unique welfare challenges including road mortality, deliberate persecution, and disease in dense urban populations.
Urban fox welfare encompasses both individual suffering from disease, injury, and persecution, and population-level management questions. Mange-infected foxes experience intense itching, hair loss, and eventual organ failure if untreated - treatment with oral or topical ivermectin is effective and widely provided by wildlife organisations. Road mortality causes traumatic injury and death to large numbers annually. The ethical complexity of urban fox management includes weighing individual welfare against community tolerance and ecosystem function. Compassionate management approaches that prioritise welfare over lethal control exist and are increasingly supported by evidence.