Persistent knowledge gaps and systemic barriers leave wildlife welfare underserved across the disaster management...

Wildlife welfare during and after disasters is a critical yet underrecognized One Health issue. Climate change increasingly enhances ecological disasters (fires, floods, heatwaves, cyclones, etc). Consequently, these disasters result in wildlife suffering and mortality at scales that challenge existing approaches to emergency management (EM). Although EM planning for animals in disasters has expanded across many jurisdictions, wildlife welfare remains inconsistently integrated into disaster preparedness, response, and recovery frameworks. Current evidence demonstrates that three primary barriers limit effective integration of wildlife welfare concerns into existing EM systems: (1) lack of coordinated governance across relevant agencies and stakeholders, (2) conflicts between welfare concerns focused on individual animals versus populations, and (3) lack of validated welfare assessment tools and humane end points for wildlife species. Key research priorities to overcome the barriers include (1) developing frameworks for effectively integrating wildlife expertise into EM systems, (2) building collaborative networks integrating individual and population-level research, (3) developing validated field welfare indicators and rapid assessment tools across taxa, (4) developing humane end points and decision thresholds for wildlife triage, (5) implementing postrelease survival and welfare monitoring as a standard metric, and (6) investigating the effectiveness and appropriateness of food and water provisioning. The companion Currents in One Health article by Cerda et al, JAVMA, July 2026, addresses how to integrate One Health and veterinary professionals into EM to enhance wildlife welfare during disasters.