Large infrastructure and development projects can dramatically affect wild and farmed animal populations. Integrating animal welfare impact assessment into environmental review processes is an emerging and important welfare policy frontier.
Development projects affecting animals are routinely assessed for their population and biodiversity effects while individual animal welfare is largely neglected. A dam displacing tens of thousands of animals causes welfare harms to those individuals beyond the population-level conservation impact: stress from habitat disruption, competition in displaced populations, and direct injury and death during construction. Agricultural development loans that fund intensification of livestock systems without welfare standards create welfare harms for millions of animals. Integrating welfare assessment into development project review processes would change incentives, requiring projects to minimise welfare harms alongside biodiversity impacts. The technical tools for welfare assessment exist; the gap is in regulatory frameworks requiring their use.