Natural disasters — floods, wildfires, earthquakes and cyclones — cause mass animal suffering and death, requiring emergency welfare response and better integration of animals into disaster preparedness planning.
Natural disasters create welfare emergencies that combine scale with speed — millions of animals can be affected within hours. Wild animals caught in wildfires face burning, smoke inhalation and displacement into unfamiliar habitats where they compete with resident animals. Farm animals in floods may drown in their pens, unable to escape. Post-disaster recovery for wild animals includes habitat assessment, rescue of injured individuals and long-term monitoring of population effects. Integrating animal welfare into disaster risk reduction planning is both a welfare imperative and a practical necessity, as human evacuation rates are demonstrably higher when animal rescue is included in emergency plans.