Advances in wildlife neuroscience are enabling welfare assessment of wild species that were previously inaccessible to welfare science, expanding the scope of welfare consideration.
Wildlife welfare science has historically been constrained by the impossibility of measuring welfare states in free-living animals without disturbing them. Non-invasive techniques including fecal hormone analysis, remote behavioral monitoring using camera traps and biologgers, and accelerometer-based activity analysis are overcoming these limitations. These methods reveal chronic stress states in wildlife populations affected by habitat loss, human disturbance, and disease that were previously invisible to welfare assessment. The emerging field of welfare biology aims to develop practical welfare assessment and intervention approaches for wild animal populations.