Welfare biology applies scientific methods to understanding and improving the welfare of wild animals, challenging traditional conservation's focus on populations over individuals.
Welfare biology challenges the intuition that wild animals live naturally good lives by documenting the pervasive suffering from disease, predation, parasites and environmental stressors that characterises wildlife existence. Most wild animals die young, often painfully. While human interventions in wild animal suffering raise complex ethical questions, the field argues that ignoring wild animal suffering is itself an ethical choice. Research into feasible, safe interventions - from wildlife vaccination to reproductive management - is beginning to generate evidence about what is possible.