Systematic monitoring of migratory raptor populations at hawk watch sites provides early warning of conservation problems across breeding and wintering ranges.
Migratory raptors face welfare threats across their entire range including breeding grounds, migration corridors, and wintering areas. Monitoring that tracks population trends enables detection of problems early enough for effective intervention. Raptors are long-lived with slow reproduction, meaning population declines detected by monitoring represent real welfare losses across many individual bird lifetimes.