Earthquakes, floods, fires, and storms cause mass suffering for wildlife and farm animals that receives far less attention than human casualty figures.
Natural disasters create acute welfare crises for animals across all categories — wild, farm, and companion. Most disaster planning focuses overwhelmingly on human welfare, with animal welfare treated as secondary. The result is predictable: mass abandonment of companion animals, livestock drowning or starvation, and wildlife death without coordinated response. Improving animal disaster welfare requires pre-event planning with evacuation routes for large animals, emergency shelter capacity for companion animals, and rapid response protocols for wildlife rescue. The growing frequency of extreme weather events from climate change makes this planning increasingly urgent.