Migrating songbirds face a gauntlet of threats including illegal trapping, window collisions, communication towers, and habitat loss at stopover sites that cause billions of deaths annually.
Migrating songbirds experience extraordinary physical demands — some species fly thousands of kilometres non-stop over ocean and desert — and face a series of human-created hazards along the way. Illegal trapping using mist nets and lime sticks causes acute suffering before death. Glass building strikes cause severe injury and death. Artificial light pollution causes disorientation, exhaustion, and collision mortality. The cumulative effect of these threats is a global decline in migratory songbird populations that represents both an ecological crisis and the welfare harm of billions of individual animals.