Rewilding projects that restore predators and natural processes create complex welfare questions about predation, competition, and the balance between ecosystem health and individual suffering.
Rewilding presents welfare ethics at its most complex. Restoring predators increases predation events that cause acute suffering, yet may reduce the chronic suffering of starvation and disease in prey populations that become unmanaged in the absence of predators. Reintroduced animals face welfare challenges themselves during establishment. The welfare case for rewilding requires evaluation of population-level outcomes over time, not only acute individual suffering events. Most welfare analysts conclude that functioning ecosystems supported by rewilding produce better aggregate welfare outcomes than degraded ecosystems with unmanaged prey populations, but this conclusion requires ongoing evidence and honest evaluation.