Scotland's ambitious rewilding projects offer significant welfare opportunities through large-scale habitat restoration, but raise specific welfare questions about introduced and reintroduced species.
Scottish rewilding welfare involves multiple intersecting dimensions. Reintroduced beavers benefit from restored access to their ecological role as ecosystem engineers; their welfare in appropriate habitat is excellent. Lynx reintroduction, if it proceeds, raises welfare questions for both the small number of reintroduced individuals (welfare stress of translocation) and prey species encountering a new predator. The deer management challenge in rewilded landscapes involves either increased predation welfare costs or continued culling welfare costs. Landscape-scale rewilding generally benefits biodiversity and the welfare of the many species that benefit from habitat restoration, even if individual predation events cause welfare harm.