Atlantic puffins are beloved seabirds facing unprecedented welfare challenges from climate-driven shifts in prey fish availability. Understanding their ecology and threats guides effective conservation support.
Puffin welfare illustrates how climate change creates welfare emergencies through ecosystem disruption rather than direct physical harm. Individual puffin chicks starving in their burrows because parents cannot find adequate sand eels nearby suffer a welfare harm — prolonged starvation in a confined space — that no direct intervention can easily address at colony scale. The welfare mechanism is indirect: changing sea temperatures shift the distribution of the small schooling fish that puffins depend on, making them unavailable within the energetically feasible foraging range of breeding colonies. Adult puffins committing to a breeding season cannot relocate their nest sites when food availability collapses, and may raise chicks that receive insufficient food despite parental efforts that are near-maximum. The most welfare-effective interventions operate at the climate and fisheries levels rather than at the individual colony level: reducing greenhouse gas emissions addresses the root cause, while fisheries management that restricts sand eel and herring harvest gives marine food webs more resilience to the temperature changes already occurring. Monitoring programs at puffin colonies provide welfare-relevant data on chick provisioning rates and condition that can inform targeted conservation responses.