Migratory birds traveling thousands of kilometers depend on stopover habitat for refueling, rest, and weathering adverse conditions, and the degradation of these critical sites creates welfare crises for exhausted migrants.
Migratory bird stopover welfare illustrates how momentary habitat decisions create welfare crises or welfare opportunities for thousands of individual birds in transit. A garden or park with abundant native fruit-bearing shrubs and insects provides energy subsidy for exhausted migrants that can mean the difference between survival and death during migration. A brightly lit glass-facade building on a migratory flyway creates a mortality trap for the same birds. Individual property owners, urban planners, and building managers all have leverage over the quality of stopover habitat and the collision mortality risk in their areas. The cumulative effect of many improved urban stopover sites is measurable at population scale.