This morning I treated two juvenile foxes with sarcoptic mange from a downtown park, and public feeding stations seem to be driving transmission at shared bowls and den sites. What outreach or management changes have worked for you — clear “don’t feed” signage, removing communal dishes, hotline reporting — paired with permitted treatment, so we protect both the foxes and neighboring raccoons?
What finally worked for us downtown: we swapped the “don’t feed” signs for a QR that files a hotline report and shows the ordinance; @ParksDept crews pull communal dishes during the 7 a.m. trash run, and we map reports to hit shared den sites first. Small caveat: compliance jumped only after we posted one mange recovery before/after and promised a 24-hour callback — without the callback window, reports tanked.
QRs helped, but the real shift came when we did dawn/dusk sweeps with Animal Control and left a 24‑hr “dish will be removed under ordinance” tag before pulling bowls — people stopped restocking. Our hotline auto‑texts a photo of typical mange patches plus a short vet note about pet risk, and local clinics pushed the same message; behavior changed faster than any sign. If you try it, offer one water‑only station by the den for a month to reduce conflict, then pull it if you see clustering.
I do a quick ‘first-article’ check on each new batch — scan a calibration piece, mill a 10 mm bar, and snap a D65 shade photo — a smoke alarm for drift that’s cut our QC back-and-forth. It adds a few minutes, but if you’re solo, just run it when you switch zirconia lots instead of every batch.