Atlantic puffins face accelerating threats from climate-driven prey distribution shifts, requiring adaptive conservation approaches including supplemental feeding, colony management, and habitat protection.
Pufflings that receive insufficient food in their burrows deteriorate over days before dying from starvation and exposure. Parents that make repeated unsuccessful foraging trips experience energetic depletion and stress. Repeated breeding failures across multiple seasons cause adult birds to skip breeding years, accelerating population decline. Supplemental feeding programs that deliver sand eels to colonies during prey failure can prevent chick starvation and maintain breeding momentum, providing a direct welfare benefit. While emergency feeding cannot substitute for prey recovery, it provides a bridge that maintains colony viability while longer-term interventions address the climate and fisheries drivers of prey decline.