Eurasian curlews undertake significant migrations between breeding and wintering grounds, facing welfare risks from hunting pressure, habitat loss, and exhaustion on staging sites.
Curlews on migration face acute welfare risks from exhaustion when staging sites offer inadequate food, and from gunshot wounding in countries where legal hunting continues. Birds shot but not killed face prolonged suffering from untreated wounds. Exhausted birds landing on unsuitable staging habitat have reduced refuelling success and lower probability of completing migration. The continued legal hunting of a species in serious decline in multiple breeding range countries represents an acute individual welfare cost compounding a conservation crisis. Stopping hunting of declining migratory species is both a conservation and welfare imperative.