Disease in wild animal populations causes significant individual suffering; management interventions including vaccination, treatment, and culling each carry welfare implications that should inform decision-making.
Wildlife disease imposes suffering at individual and population levels. Individual animals dying from disease typically experience weeks to months of progressive debilitation. Management interventions must be evaluated both for their population-level effectiveness and their welfare implications for individual animals. Vaccination programmes — whether for fox rabies, badger tuberculosis, or rabbit haemorrhagic disease — can prevent enormous amounts of disease suffering, while culling as disease management must be justified against this welfare benefit.