Migratory shorebirds undertake extraordinary long-distance journeys that depend on a network of coastal stopover sites increasingly threatened by development and sea level rise.
Migratory shorebirds that arrive at stopover sites without adequate food face a welfare crisis: they must double their body weight in days to fuel the next flight leg, and failure to do so means death en route or arrival at breeding grounds too depleted to reproduce. The energetic demands of long-distance migration leave no margin for habitat degradation at critical refuelling sites. Individual bird welfare is inseparable from habitat integrity across the entire flyway.