Freshwater mussels are among the most endangered animal groups globally, with many species on the brink of extinction. Their welfare and conservation needs are linked to river health and pollution management.
The welfare status of freshwater mussels is complicated by uncertainty about their capacity for sentience, but their conservation status is unambiguous: they represent a biodiversity crisis of the first order. Whether or not mussels experience welfare in the way vertebrates do, their ecological function is irreplaceable — they are engineers of river health whose filtering activity supports entire aquatic communities. River pollution, particularly from agriculture, sewage, and channel modification, has devastated mussel populations across Europe and North America. Restoring mussel populations requires improving river water quality, removing barriers to host fish migration, and active conservation breeding programmes. Some jurisdictions now conduct translocation and captive breeding of endangered mussel species as last-resort conservation measures.