The Small Behaviours That Shape Survival: Why Welfare Must Be Central to Conservation

By Dr Hannah Trayford Early in my career, I was told I would eventually have to choose. Choose between welfare - focused on the individual animal - and conservation - focused on populations, scale, and protection. It was framed as a clean divide: caring for individual orangutans versus saving the species. Sentiment versus science. The implication was clear: welfare was the soft option, something…