Amphibians are the world's most threatened vertebrate group, facing multiple simultaneous pressures including habitat destruction, disease, climate change, and pollution that cause population-level and individual animal suffering.
Amphibian welfare and conservation are inseparable. Individual frogs, salamanders, and caecilians experience the physiological stress of habitat degradation through their permeable skin — pollutants and temperature extremes cause direct physiological harm. Mass mortality events from chytrid disease cause individual animals to die from skin dysfunction, unable to regulate water and ion balance. The scale of this crisis — hundreds of species in decline, dozens extinct — represents one of the largest ongoing vertebrate welfare events. Addressing it requires habitat protection, pollution reduction, disease management, and climate action across every governance level.