Urban and suburban noise pollution disrupts wildlife communication, navigation, and behavior in ways that cause welfare harm and reduce reproductive success.
Urban noise pollution imposes a chronic welfare cost on wildlife that is invisible to most people — yet measurable in stress hormones, behavioral changes, and reproductive outcomes across dozens of species. Animals that rely on acoustic communication for mate attraction, territory defense, predator warning, and navigation experience this disruption as both an ecological challenge and a welfare burden. Songbirds singing in frequencies that compromise their mating success, frogs unable to attract mates against the background roar of traffic, and bats whose echolocation is disrupted by acoustic clutter are all experiencing welfare harms that informed urban design could reduce. Quieter cities are better cities for animals and humans alike.