Explicit value trade-offs in conservation: integrating animal welfare

Conservation is an evolving discipline, with its values changing over time. Animal welfare is gaining attention, but can conflict with other conservation values. We illustrate how different management decisions arise from prioritizing different values, and show how these conflicts can depend on value prioritization, as well as how values such as animal welfare are defined. This includes the limits (type of welfare states), scope (range of species), and timescales considered. Since small changes in value articulation and prioritization can lead to major changes in management decisions, we argue for making values and trade-offs explicit. An established structured decision-making (SDM) framework can enhance transparency, reducing misunderstanding in conservation controversies and helping maintain public trust in science.