Migratory birds face a gauntlet of threats on their seasonal journeys. Understanding these threats enables targeted interventions that reduce suffering and mortality at scale.
The welfare of migratory birds involves suffering at an almost incomprehensible scale: billions of individual animals navigating intercontinental journeys while facing a nearly continuous array of human-caused hazards. Building collisions cause traumatic injury and death; exhausted birds grounded near artificial light sources are killed by cats; illegal trapping involves capture, captivity, and killing on a massive scale in some regions. The suffering is often invisible because individual incidents are dispersed across vast geographies and the animals involved are small and easily overlooked. Yet the aggregate welfare impact rivals or exceeds any other wildlife welfare crisis. Solutions exist and work: lights-out programs during migration, bird-safe glass standards, cat management around stopover sites, and illegal trapping enforcement all demonstrably reduce mortality and suffering.