The realisation that wild animals experience vast amounts of suffering from predation, starvation, disease, and harsh weather raises profound ethical questions about our moral obligations to wild animal welfare.
Wild animal suffering represents one of the most challenging ethical frontiers in animal welfare. The romantic view of nature as harmonious belies the reality that most wild animals experience significant suffering from predation, starvation, parasitism, disease, and harsh weather before dying young. If animal suffering matters morally, the scale of suffering in wild ecosystems is enormous. Practical responses are difficult and risks of intervention include disrupting ecological relationships. However, some interventions - wildlife vaccination programmes against disease, contraception to prevent starvation from overpopulation, and rescue of individual injured animals - represent welfare improvements that are broadly accepted. Longer-term engagement with wild animal welfare as a serious ethical issue is growing among philosophers and welfare scientists.