Wild Atlantic and Pacific salmon face multiple human-caused welfare threats across their migratory lifecycle, from river habitat degradation to ocean pollution and farm-origin disease spillover.
Wild salmon welfare is shaped by the cumulative burden of multiple human activities across a complex migratory lifecycle. No single threat is responsible — rather, salmon face stacking welfare insults from sea lice, thermal stress, pollution, migration barriers, and physical capture across their lifespan. The welfare and conservation dimensions are inseparable: improving conditions for wild salmon reduces both their suffering and their extinction risk. River restoration — removing dams, improving culverts, reducing thermal pollution — addresses welfare and conservation simultaneously. Reducing sea lice spillover from nearby fish farms directly benefits juvenile wild salmon welfare. Treating wild salmon welfare as a moral concern alongside their conservation status opens new advocacy routes and ethical frameworks for their protection.