Pacific salmon face overlapping pressures from climate change, dam barriers, habitat degradation, and overharvest that affect both population viability and individual animal welfare.
Wild Pacific salmon welfare involves significant suffering across the migration and spawning cycle even without anthropogenic pressures - the spawning migration involves fasting, physiological transformation, and eventual death after spawning. Human pressures add to this: elevated water temperatures cause heat stress during migration, dam passage involves exhausting ladder navigation, and degraded spawning habitat reduces reproductive success after an already arduous journey. Dam removal, which has restored salmon to numerous Pacific Northwest rivers, represents one of the most impactful welfare and conservation interventions available.