Wild animals experience vast amounts of suffering from predation, disease, starvation, and parasitism, raising profound ethical questions about whether and how humans should intervene.
Wild animal suffering is an ethically profound and practically challenging area that most animal welfare frameworks largely ignore. The romanticization of nature as harmonious masks the reality that the average prey animal dies young through a terrifying predation event, and that parasitism, disease, and starvation are constant features of wild existence. Taking the welfare of wild animals seriously does not require the impossible project of eliminating predation; it does require taking their suffering into account in decisions about ecosystem management, wildlife medicine, and human-wildlife interface management. Graduated interventions — treating injured wildlife, developing wildlife contraception for overabundant populations, vaccinating wild animals against preventable diseases — represent practical starting points for taking wild animal welfare seriously without naively attempting to remake nature.