Wild Pacific and Atlantic salmon face welfare challenges from dam barriers, warming rivers, sea lice from fish farms, and spawning migration obstacles that cause significant individual suffering.
Wild salmon welfare is embedded in ecosystem health in ways that make it inseparable from river conservation policy. Individual salmon experience the full gauntlet of human-caused obstacles during both ocean and river phases of their life cycle: sea lice acquired near fish farm cages cause tissue damage and immune stress; warming rivers force energetically costly holding behavior; dam passage involves physical injury, disorientation, and predation pressure at trap-and-haul facilities. Atlantic salmon that survive all obstacles to reach spawning grounds then face the extraordinary physiological stress of reproduction followed by death — a process that in degraded streams is increasingly cut short before reproduction occurs, representing both individual and population-level tragedy. Dam removal has proven to be one of the most effective large-scale welfare and conservation interventions, dramatically increasing spawning success for both Atlantic and Pacific species.