Large-scale nature recovery networks create landscapes where wildlife populations can sustain themselves, with individual animal welfare benefits from restored habitats and ecosystem processes.
Landscape-scale conservation is the highest-leverage welfare intervention available: by restoring the ecological conditions under which animals evolved, landscape recovery enables populations to live in environments that meet their evolved welfare needs. Animals in functional ecosystems can express natural behaviours, have access to appropriate food resources, regulate populations through natural predation, and maintain the social structures their wellbeing requires. The welfare benefit per individual may be less visible than direct intervention but aggregates across enormous numbers of animals in restored areas.