Iria Murado Carballo

Initiatives protecting wild animal health, including vaccination campaigns, medical treatments, and parasite control programs, have been implemented for decades. Their goal has been to safeguard human well-being, as well as to further conservationist goals. This paper argues that the well-being of wild animals, considered as sentient individuals, should be another crucial reason to expand these measures. Rather than treating animal health in a purely instrumental manner, this perspective aligns more closely with the ethos of the One Health paradigm. The paper presents examples of existing programs that benefit wild animals and could be broadened based on this idea. Next, it explains the kind of cross-disciplinary research framework—integrating animal welfare science, ecology, and other disciplines—needed to successfully develop effective ways to help wild animals. It then argues that the reasons to protect wild animal health also apply in the case of other ways to help wild animals. This is relevant especially in light of the very large scale of wild animal suffering.

Wild animals are increasingly affected by disasters, yet they remain largely excluded from emergency response efforts. This paper argues that if wild animals are morally considerable beings, their suffering during disasters warrants both ethical concern and practical intervention. Disasters inflict a wide range of direct harms, including injuries, disorientation, and psychological distress, as well as indirect effects such as resource scarcity and altered population dynamics. These harms often persist well beyond the initial event and vary significantly among individuals depending on species, age, health, and environmental context. Despite the scale of the problem, institutional responses and funding for wild animal aid remain minimal. The paper argues that this is a neglected yet tractable issue and outlines concrete strategies for providing assistance before, during, and after disasters. It proposes context-sensitive criteria for evaluating suffering, emphasizes the importance of species-specific and non-invasive monitoring, and challenges the moral relevance of the distinction between natural and human-caused disasters, pointing out that most events result from a combination of natural hazards and anthropogenic factors. While logistical and technical challenges exist, they do not justify inaction. Addressing the suffering of wild animals in disaster scenarios offers a realistic and morally urgent opportunity to reduce large-scale harm and to begin integrating animal welfare into broader disaster response frameworks.