NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program

The world contains a vast number and wide variety of animals. And while many animals are now captive and domesticated, the vast majority are still, at least to a degree, free and wild. Mammals, birds, fishes, annelids, arthropods, molluscs, and many other animals all live in complex, dynamic ecosystems. And human activity is increasingly shaping the fates of these ecosystems, along with the fates of all the animals within them.

These realities raise important questions about wild animal welfare. How much positive welfare (pleasure, happiness, satisfaction, and other such states) do wild animals experience, and how much negative welfare (pain, suffering, frustration, and other such states) do they experience? To what extent is humanity helping and harming wild animals at present? To what extent, if any, can humanity help wild animals more or harm them less in the future?

These questions are urgent. Trillions of wild animals suffer each year due to farming, fishing, deforestation, development, and other human activities, as well as rising temperatures, ocean acidification, extreme weather, ecosystem collapse, and other effects of human activities. And of course, countless wild animals also suffer each year due to hunger, thirst, illness, injury, and other natural causes, even when their habitats are well-preserved.

These questions are also neglected. Most animal welfare research and policy focuses on domesticated animals, not wild animals. And most environmental research and policy focuses on species and ecosystems, not individuals. Yet the needs of individual wild animals are different from the needs of individual domesticated animals, as well as from the needs of species and ecosystems. They merit much more attention than they receive.

These questions are also potentially tractable. Improving wild animal welfare at scale is difficult at present due to the complexity of natural systems and our limited knowledge, power, and political will. But we should not assume that our current limitations are fixed. Many changes that seem impossible beforehand also seem inevitable after the fact. If we work to improve our ability to help wild animals, we might be surprised by what we can accomplish.

The NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program aims to advance understanding about what wild animals are like, how humans and wild animals interact, and how humans can improve our interactions with wild animals at scale. We pursue this goal through foundational research in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, as well as through outreach to academics, advocates, policymakers, and the general public.