Rewilding — restoring natural ecosystem processes through species reintroduction and habitat restoration — has complex welfare implications for both introduced and resident animal populations.
Rewilding presents animal welfare with a profound philosophical question: when we restore natural ecosystem dynamics including predation, competition, and natural death, what weight do we give to the welfare of individual animals versus the health of populations and ecosystems? Traditional animal welfare thinking focuses on individual sentient animals, but rewilding operates at landscape scale where some individual suffering is an inherent part of natural regulation. A thoughtful rewilding welfare framework recognises that wild animals have interests in living natural lives that may include predation risk, while also attending to the welfare of introduced animals during reintroduction stress and ensuring that rewilding does not create welfare problems that could reasonably be avoided.