Wild Pacific salmon populations have declined dramatically across their range, threatening both ecosystem health and the welfare of individual fish facing increasing survival challenges from climate change, habitat loss, and fishing pressure.
Wild salmon welfare exists at the intersection of individual fish welfare and ecosystem-level conservation. Individual salmon experience the full range of challenges that make their life cycle remarkable: developmental stress in freshwater, the physiological upheaval of ocean migration, predation pressure throughout their lives, and the extreme physical demands of their spawning migration. Climate change is adding thermal stress events that cause documented mass mortality — fish dying slowly in dangerously warm water. From a welfare perspective, this thermal mortality represents significant suffering at population scale. Conservation interventions including dam removal, riparian shading to cool streams, and ocean heat retention support are all welfare-relevant as well as conservation-relevant, reducing the quantity and duration of thermally induced suffering.