Rewilding projects restore natural ecosystem processes but raise complex welfare questions about predation, starvation, and the suffering involved in natural ecological dynamics.
Rewilding challenges conservationists to confront the tension between ecosystem health and individual animal welfare. Wild predation involves distress, injury, and often prolonged death for prey animals. Starvation during harsh winters causes significant suffering. Yet intensively managed landscapes also cause suffering through fragmentation, habitat loss, and population suppression. Wild animal welfare advocates argue that population-level consideration of suffering should inform rewilding decisions, without necessarily halting projects that restore natural function.