Rewilding initiatives that restore predators and natural processes to ecosystems affect wild animal welfare in complex ways. Understanding these welfare implications enables more complete assessment of rewilding outcomes.
Rewilding creates genuine welfare trade-offs that conservation advocates do not always acknowledge. Reintroducing predators increases predation mortality and fear stress in prey populations — these are welfare costs for individual animals. However, rewilded ecosystems that function with natural predator-prey dynamics also tend to have healthier prey populations with lower disease burden, better nutrition, and less severe overcrowding than systems without predators. The welfare calculus of rewilding requires thinking beyond individual events to population-level welfare dynamics. A world with wolves includes more animals killed by wolves but also fewer animals dying slowly from starvation and disease in overpopulated, habitat-degraded conditions.