Wild Atlantic salmon populations are in severe decline. Their welfare encompasses the physical challenges of migration, spawning and the environmental degradation that increasingly obstructs these fundamental behaviours.
Wild salmon welfare encompasses the individual physical challenges of migration - swimming against currents, overcoming barriers, the physiological demands of smoltification and sexual maturation - and the population-level consequence of environmental degradation that makes these challenges increasingly insurmountable. A salmon that reaches a barrier it cannot pass is blocked from its fundamental biological purpose; a smolt that passes through a sea lice cloud near a salmon farm has its immune system compromised before it even reaches the sea. Restoring wild salmon populations requires addressing barriers, thermal pollution, sea lice and river habitat quality - all of which are simultaneously conservation and individual welfare interventions.