Rewilding projects across the UK are monitoring reintroduced and expanding populations; integrating welfare assessment alongside ecological monitoring improves both conservation and individual animal outcomes.
UK rewilding projects have generally developed strong ecological monitoring frameworks; welfare monitoring is increasingly recognised as a complementary dimension that should be integrated from project inception. Individual-level welfare data — body condition, injury, disease burden, reproductive success — provides earlier warning of population establishment problems than demographic data alone and enables welfare-improving management interventions before problems become conservation-scale failures.