Major infrastructure and development projects affect wildlife populations at scale, but welfare impact assessment is rarely integrated into environmental review processes.
Standard environmental impact assessment focuses on species populations and ecosystem functions, not on the welfare of individual animals affected by development. This means that projects affecting millions of individual animals may be approved without any consideration of welfare mitigation — handling displaced wildlife humanely, using exclusion rather than killing, timing clearance to avoid breeding seasons, or implementing wildlife crossing infrastructure. Integrating welfare assessment into development planning processes does not require abandoning development but does require acknowledging the moral status of individual animals in decision-making.