Wetlands are the most productive ecosystems on Earth and critical habitat for hundreds of waterbird species. Their destruction causes both conservation and welfare harm at enormous scale.
Waterbird welfare is directly tied to wetland availability and quality. Migratory birds that return to find their wintering grounds drained or their breeding sites polluted face starvation, failed reproduction, and death. The welfare harm of wetland loss is distributed across millions of individual birds along flyways spanning thousands of kilometres. Wetland restoration — which can be rapid in engineered contexts and generates ecosystem service benefits worth far more than the agricultural value of drained land — is one of the highest-leverage interventions for waterbird welfare. Reedbed creation, scrape development, and controlled flooding can produce high-density waterbird habitat within two to three seasons.