Wolf recovery across Europe and North America creates both conservation success and human-wildlife conflict, requiring evidence-based coexistence strategies that protect both livestock and wolf welfare.
Wolf recovery presents a genuine ethical challenge: wolves experience significant welfare costs when trapped, translocated or lethally controlled, yet without active management, human-wildlife conflict escalates and undermines political support for conservation. Individual wolves caught in snares set for other species suffer painful injuries. Wolves displaced from territories experience stress, reduced food access and social disruption. Coexistence programs that invest in non-lethal protection measures not only reduce livestock losses but minimize welfare harms to wolves themselves. Supporting the political and economic conditions for coexistence is therefore both a conservation and an animal welfare priority.