As climate change shifts species ranges, assisted migration — deliberately moving species to new climatically suitable areas — is proposed as a conservation tool with significant welfare implications.
Assisted migration creates welfare questions at both individual and population levels. Individual animals moved to new habitats face the welfare challenges of translocation — capture stress, transport stress and social integration challenges. At population level, climate-driven range shift means that animals remaining in their original range face increasingly unsuitable conditions — heat stress, food timing mismatches and reproductive failure. The welfare case for assisted migration rests on avoiding these chronic welfare harms by moving animals to conditions better matched to their physiological and ecological needs. The precautionary principle in conservation must be balanced against the welfare costs of inaction.