Coral reefs support the highest marine biodiversity on Earth and provide habitat for billions of fish and invertebrates. Their rapid degradation from climate change and pollution represents a massive wildlife welfare crisis.
The degradation of coral reefs represents one of the most profound ongoing wildlife welfare crises on Earth, affecting billions of individual animals across hundreds of thousands of species. Fish and invertebrates that depend on reef habitat face habitat loss, food insecurity, increased predation, and population collapse as reefs bleach and die. Each bleaching event kills coral polyps — themselves animals — through prolonged thermal stress. The fish, crustaceans, molluscs, and other reef inhabitants that lose their habitat face welfare harms from starvation, displacement, and population fragmentation. Protecting coral reefs is simultaneously an ecological, cultural, economic, and animal welfare imperative of extraordinary scope. Addressing climate change is the single most important intervention.