Wildlife rehabilitation must balance immediate welfare with long-term wild survival, requiring evidence-based protocols and honest release criteria.
Wildlife rehabilitation raises unique welfare tensions between the welfare of the individual animal during care and its welfare and survival capacity after release. An animal that recovers physically but is habituated to humans and cannot avoid predators or find food is not a rehabilitation success. Strict minimisation of human contact during rehabilitation of species requiring wild behaviour for survival is a welfare imperative, even though it may seem counterintuitive from a care perspective. Honest assessment of release viability, including willingness to euthanise animals who cannot survive independently, is a marker of welfare-centred rehabilitation rather than welfare compromise.