Migratory geese face welfare challenges during long-distance flights including energetic stress, adverse weather encounters, collision mortality, and illegal hunting, with stopover habitat quality critically affecting welfare outcomes.
Goose migration welfare encompasses the physiological stress of long flights, the energetic demands of fueling before migration, and the mortality risks of the route itself. Individual geese experiencing weather events during migration, arriving at degraded stopover sites, or encountering illegal hunting face welfare harms ranging from energetic depletion to death. The welfare and conservation trajectories are closely linked: habitat loss at stopover sites affects both individual welfare through reduced fueling opportunities and population welfare through reduced survival and breeding success. Climate change adds uncertainty to migration timing decisions, creating mismatch risks that impose welfare costs particularly on young, inexperienced birds following their first independent migration.