Climate change is creating new welfare challenges for farm animals, wildlife, and companion animals through heat stress, disease range expansion, and ecosystem disruption that requires proactive adaptation.
Climate change is not a future welfare threat — it is already causing suffering through increased heat stress events, novel disease outbreaks, and ecosystem disruption affecting wild animal welfare. Heat-stressed dairy cows in California during summer heat waves experience reduced blood flow, elevated cortisol, and immune suppression that causes measurable suffering. Wild animals whose prey base or habitat conditions shift faster than they can adapt face chronic food insecurity. Preparing animal welfare systems for climate change requires both immediate adaptation — shade, cooling, heat-tolerant genetics — and the long-term mitigation that reduces the severity of future warming.