Understanding the welfare experiences of wild ungulates — including the suffering from predation, starvation, and disease — informs more compassionate approaches to wildlife management.
Wild ungulates experience a full range of welfare challenges — from the chronic stress of predator awareness to acute suffering during disease outbreaks, severe winters, and transportation for management purposes. A welfare-conscious approach to wild ungulate management acknowledges these experiences and seeks to minimize unnecessary suffering while maintaining ecological integrity. This includes disease surveillance that enables early intervention, humane capture and handling during management operations, and consideration of welfare during decisions about hunting seasons, predator management, and habitat modification. Bison conservation represents a success story in which welfare and conservation goals have been largely aligned through careful population management.