Rewilding projects restore natural processes and species to degraded ecosystems. The welfare implications for individual animals in rewilded landscapes require careful consideration alongside ecological benefits.
Rewilding presents genuine welfare tradeoffs. Individual animals in rewilded landscapes experience natural selection processes including predation, starvation, and disease that cause suffering at the individual level. From a wild animal welfare perspective, each deer killed by a wolf experiences terror and pain; each starving animal in a harsh winter suffers. Advocates of extensive welfare consideration must engage with whether the suffering in natural predator-prey systems is morally equivalent to welfare problems in managed systems. From a conservation perspective, rewilded ecosystems support populations with greater behavioral complexity, more natural social structures, and reduced chronic disease from inbreeding compared to isolated remnant populations.