Welfare biology is an emerging academic discipline that applies scientific methods to understanding and improving the wellbeing of wild animals on a large scale.
Welfare biology represents a significant intellectual expansion of moral concern. If wild animal suffering matters ethically, then the billions of animals experiencing chronic parasitism, injury, starvation, and predation constitute a massive welfare problem dwarfing human-caused animal suffering. The field is early-stage: most interventions are speculative or in small-scale trial. However, establishing the scientific and ethical foundations now - before large-scale intervention becomes technically possible - is important. Some specific interventions are already practical: wildlife disease management, rescue and rehabilitation, and reducing some anthropogenic harms to wild populations. The philosophical dimension concerns whether nature's suffering is our moral responsibility.