Large-scale development projects including infrastructure, agriculture, and extractive industries can have major impacts on animal welfare, but welfare is rarely included in environmental impact assessments.
Development projects cause animal suffering on a massive scale through habitat destruction, displacement, direct injury during construction, and fragmentation of wildlife populations. Standard environmental impact assessment frameworks capture some of these effects through habitat and species population metrics but rarely address individual animal welfare directly. The development of Animal Welfare Impact Assessment as a distinct tool — analogous to human health impact assessment — would require project planners to consider and mitigate welfare costs alongside biodiversity and ecosystem service impacts. Early examples include requirements for wildlife crossing design in road projects and habitat surveys before vegetation clearing, but systematic welfare consideration remains the exception rather than the rule.