Wild Atlantic and Pacific salmon face habitat degradation that compromises their ability to complete natural life cycles, with river restoration programs offering welfare and conservation co-benefits.
Wild salmon welfare is intimately connected to habitat quality across their complex migratory life cycle. Barriers to migration cause salmon to exhaust themselves attempting to pass dams, experience thermal stress in warming rivers, and ultimately fail to reproduce. The chronic stress of navigating degraded habitat, combined with sea lice burdens and reduced prey availability, compromises welfare throughout the salmon's life. River restoration — through dam removal, riparian planting, and water quality improvement — addresses these welfare harms while simultaneously serving conservation goals. The alignment of welfare and conservation interests in salmon habitat restoration makes it one of the clearest areas where investment produces multiple simultaneous benefits.