Wildlife crime including poaching, trafficking and illegal persecution causes enormous welfare harm to individual animals. Understanding the scale and welfare dimensions of wildlife crime motivates effective response.
Wildlife crime is primarily addressed through conservation, trade and criminal justice frameworks - the welfare dimension of individual animal suffering receives less attention than species and population impacts. But the welfare harm is enormous: a snared badger may suffer for hours before dying; a trafficked parrot may spend weeks in appalling transport conditions; a poached elephant calf watches its mother killed before facing an uncertain life in captivity. Integrating welfare into wildlife crime response - including mandatory veterinary assessment of seized animals, welfare-informed enforcement training and welfare evidence in prosecutions - would both improve individual animal outcomes and strengthen the moral case for enforcement action.