Citizen science programs enable large-scale monitoring of wild and farm animal populations, providing welfare-relevant data that would otherwise be impossible to collect systematically.
Citizen science contributes to animal welfare by generating the population-level data needed to identify welfare problems at scale. Bird population monitoring detected the collapse of farmland species before other methods could have achieved comparable coverage. Amphibian road mortality surveys have informed crossing infrastructure design. Seal and whale sighting networks enable detection of entangled animals. The collective observation of millions of volunteers constitutes a welfare monitoring network far exceeding what professional science alone could achieve.