Emperor penguins breed on Antarctic sea ice that is rapidly disappearing due to climate change. Catastrophic breeding failures at multiple colonies in recent years raise urgent welfare and conservation concerns.
The 2023 breeding failures represent welfare events of enormous scale: hundreds of thousands of chicks drowned when sea ice broke up before they were ready to fledge. Adult emperor penguins walking to failed breeding sites and losing eggs or chicks to ice collapse experience the behavioral aftermath of reproductive loss. Individual penguins that survive breeding failure must rebuild energy reserves while facing increasingly unstable ice conditions. The welfare implications operate at both individual and population levels, and the driver — climate change — operates at global scale. Individual action to reduce carbon emissions is the most direct welfare intervention available to distant observers.