Migratory cranes depend on a network of wetland stopover sites during their long journeys, and the loss of these critical habitats creates welfare bottlenecks affecting thousands of birds simultaneously.
Crane migration welfare operates at a landscape scale where single habitat losses have outsized consequences. Individual cranes arriving at degraded or lost stopover sites face energy deficits that impair migration success and can cause mortality. The concentration of large proportions of world populations at single sites creates catastrophic welfare risk — a disease outbreak or habitat loss event at the Platte River during sandhill crane staging would affect half a million birds simultaneously. Conservation of migration corridors requires international cooperation across the full range of migration routes, often spanning multiple countries with different conservation priorities. Individual crane welfare on migration is also affected by hunting during stopovers in countries without full protection, and by collision with power lines and wind turbines.