Global insect populations have declined dramatically, with profound implications for ecosystems, food security, and potentially for invertebrate welfare if insects are sentient beings.
Insect decline presents a unique welfare question: if insects experience something like suffering (still uncertain but increasingly plausible for some species), their catastrophic population losses represent a welfare catastrophe of enormous scale. The philosophical uncertainty does not eliminate the moral significance — the precautionary principle suggests insect welfare deserves consideration. Beyond the welfare question, ecosystem services lost through insect decline — pollination, decomposition, pest control, food web support — harm animal welfare indirectly by destabilizing the ecosystems that all wildlife depends on. Protecting insect populations is simultaneously an ecological and potential welfare imperative.