Large and medium carnivores including wolves, leopards, pumas, and wolverines increasingly share landscapes with humans, experiencing welfare harm from conflict, road mortality, poisoning, and persecution.
Wild carnivores in human-dominated landscapes face a constellation of welfare risks that stem from conflict with agricultural and residential land use. Individual animals die from vehicle strikes, poisoning, snaring, and shooting, with acute suffering in most of these scenarios. Those that survive live with the chronic stress of navigating human infrastructure and avoiding human contact. Coexistence approaches that reduce conflict through deterrence, compensation, and community engagement have proven effective in multiple contexts and represent the welfare-positive path for both carnivore populations and human communities.