Artificial intelligence, remote sensing, and wearable technology are transforming wildlife monitoring capabilities, enabling welfare assessment at scales and in environments previously impossible — with significant implications for both conservation and welfare science.
Welfare-relevant wildlife monitoring technology creates opportunities to detect and respond to welfare problems — injury, disease, chronic stress — at population scale without the disturbance of intensive physical monitoring. This enables more targeted, welfare-positive interventions. However, data privacy, the welfare impact of tag attachment, and the risk of creating false confidence in remote monitoring all require careful management. The integration of welfare indicators into conservation monitoring is an emerging scientific priority.