Recovering wolf populations in Europe face welfare challenges from illegal killing, road mortality, and conflict-related management; monitoring individual wolf welfare alongside population growth is important.
Wolf welfare in recovery populations involves both the acute welfare costs of management interventions and the chronic welfare outcomes of living in landscapes with varying prey availability and human-wildlife conflict intensity. Wolves killed illegally experience acute suffering; wolves in low-prey areas experience nutritional stress; wolves involved in livestock conflicts face increased management pressure including translocation and lethal control. Monitoring individual wolf welfare alongside population growth provides a more complete picture of recovery success than population numbers alone.