Rewilding programs restore ecological processes and trophic complexity. Their welfare implications for individual animals are complex, involving both benefits and new welfare challenges.
Rewilding raises profound welfare questions that conservation biology often frames purely in ecological terms. When wolves are reintroduced, elk experience fear, chase, and predation that they did not before reintroduction. When wild conditions are restored, animals experience both the enrichment of complex environments and the suffering of injury, predation, and resource competition. The welfare calculus for rewilding involves comparing the welfare of populations in simplified, predator-free landscapes against the welfare of populations in ecologically complex ones where suffering is more intense but biological needs are more fully expressed. There are no easy answers, but the question deserves explicit consideration alongside the ecological and conservation benefits that motivate rewilding programs.