Atlantic puffins face mounting threats from climate-driven prey collapse, predation, and habitat degradation, with colony counts declining across much of their North Atlantic range.
Puffin chicks dying of starvation in their burrows — a documented phenomenon called "puffling failure" — represents significant wildlife suffering at scale. Adult puffins that cannot find sufficient prey fly increasingly long distances, accumulating physiological stress. Bycatch deaths in gill nets and trawls involve drowning — a distressing death for air-breathing birds. Oil contamination causes feather waterproofing failure, leading to hypothermia and drowning. Plastic ingestion accumulates toxins affecting reproductive success. The welfare dimension of puffin decline is compounded by their behavioral sophistication — puffins form long-term pair bonds and show attachment behaviors that suggest individual loss is experienced meaningfully.