Deforestation in the Amazon, Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia destroys wildlife habitat at enormous scale, causing welfare harm to billions of individual animals in the process.
Tropical deforestation is arguably the largest single ongoing cause of wildlife welfare harm globally by scale of affected individuals. Forest clearing kills animals directly through machinery and burning. Survivors are pushed into shrinking forest fragments with reduced food, increased competition, and greater human contact. Isolation of populations drives inbreeding and reduces adaptive capacity. The individual welfare harm of each animal killed or displaced is multiplied across billions of animals across the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems. Consumer food choices linked to deforestation supply chains — soy-fed livestock, palm oil products — directly connect consumption to this welfare harm at landscape scale.