The vaquita is the world's most critically endangered marine mammal with fewer than 10 individuals remaining, making every individual's welfare an acute conservation priority.
Vaquita welfare exists at the most extreme edge of conservation: each individual represents a significant proportion of the total population, and the welfare of each animal is simultaneously an individual welfare concern and a species-level emergency. Entanglement deaths cause drowning trauma in highly sensitive, acoustically complex animals. The impossibility of captive rescue means wild protection is the only viable strategy. The welfare and conservation emergencies are identical — there are so few individuals that every life lost reduces both population viability and aggregated welfare simultaneously.