UK seabirds are experiencing climate-driven welfare crises as warming seas shift fish distributions away from breeding colonies, causing catastrophic breeding failures and adult starvation.
Seabird climate welfare manifests most acutely during breeding season. Adults making repeated foraging trips and returning with insufficient food exhaust themselves while their chicks starve. Chick starvation is a prolonged welfare event - chicks weaken over days before death, with parents present but unable to provide adequately. Adult birds experience the physiological stress of repeated unsuccessful foraging trips. The climate driver of these welfare failures operates at a scale beyond individual intervention - reducing carbon emissions is the primary welfare action. However, protecting seabird colonies from additional stressors like disturbance, plastic pollution, and bycatch mortality reduces cumulative pressure during an ecologically challenging period.