Rewilding programs restore predator-prey dynamics and habitat complexity, creating welfare benefits for wild animals through more complete ecological communities.
Rewilding creates an interesting welfare tension. At the population and ecosystem level, rewilding creates conditions more consistent with what animals evolved for, potentially improving overall welfare. At the individual level, rewilding reintroduces predation, competition, and natural disease dynamics that cause individual suffering. Wild animals in rewilded ecosystems face predation risk, seasonal food scarcity, and injuries from natural competition that managed livestock in even low-welfare systems do not. The welfare calculus must consider the richness and complexity of life that rewilding enables, including the ability to perform natural behaviors, versus the guaranteed minimum provision of intensive farming. Most welfare scientists support rewilding as beneficial overall while recognizing the ethical complexity of accepting individual suffering as part of natural processes.