Atlantic salmon populations have declined by 70% in 25 years, with individual fish facing welfare harms from river barriers, pollution, parasites, and climate change throughout their lifecycle.
Wild salmon welfare is a lifecycle-long challenge: smolts navigating farm-sea lice clouds face immune challenge; adults battling river barriers exhaust themselves before spawning; fish in warming rivers experience thermal stress and reduced disease resistance. The cumulative welfare toll of these pressures is experienced by every wild salmon attempting to complete its ancient migration. Conservation interventions — river restoration, lice control around farms, climate action — are simultaneously conservation and welfare measures for hundreds of millions of individual fish.