Atlantic puffins face escalating welfare threats from climate-driven declines in their primary food source — sand eels — causing mass breeding failures and chick starvation at important colonies.
Puffin chicks starving in burrows after their parents cannot find adequate sand eels represent a direct welfare consequence of climate-driven ecological disruption. The slow starvation of nestlings over days is a welfare harm at both individual and population scales. Protecting sand eel fisheries from commercial harvest during puffin breeding seasons and addressing the root cause through climate action are the most important interventions for puffin welfare. Island predator control also removes a significant stressor from breeding colonies.