Migratory raptors face a gauntlet of threats during their annual journeys that cause mortality and welfare harm.
Migratory raptor welfare involves cumulative stressors across entire annual journeys. Birds that survive breeding face electrocution risk, illegal killing, lead poisoning, and climate-driven shifts in prey availability during migration and wintering. Lead poisoning from ingesting contaminated carcasses causes neurological damage and slow death over days to weeks. Electrocution causes instantaneous or lingering death depending on voltage. Illegal killing is often poorly regulated and widely practiced along Mediterranean flyways. Each of these threats causes individual suffering multiplied across millions of individuals annually. Most of these threats have technical solutions — raptor-safe power lines, lead-free ammunition, law enforcement — that are underimplemented.