Animal welfare considerations are commonly applied to farmed, pet and competition species but there is increasing public concern for animals in the wild. Distinct from conservation issues, is it appropriate to consider the welfare of wild animals? Most animals are affected by human activity, even if their immediate environment is not directly disturbed. I suggest that as the impact of man increases, our responsibility for animals affected should increase. But are current frameworks used for welfare assessment (such as the "five freedoms") adequate or relevant for wild species? If not, what approaches can be used to make meaningful assessments? Would it be more valuable to evaluate pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm as for scientific studies using animals? While subjective and coping aspects of welfare are likely to be important, as for farmed species, I suggest that aspects of naturalness should be more prominent. In the same way that the "five freedoms" have evolved, a welfare assessment tool for wild animals could include aspects of ranging behaviour, disturbance, breeding choice, lifespan, foraging ability and health - assessed, for example, through measures of population dynamics, resource utilization or morbidity. This approach accords with the current shift in ethical thinking towards valuing the presence of positive welfare indicators rather than the absence of negative indicators and the desire to describe a "whole life" profile, thus taking a long-term view. Using an example of a managed but essentially wild population of red deer, I will consider aspects of nutrition, exclusion from habitats and the incidence of disease to explore whether such a framework could be applied generically. I will also consider the ethical dilemma of whether humans should intervene to address perceived welfare problems and return to question whether the term welfare can mean anything to a wild animal population.