Wild penguin populations face compounding welfare threats from climate change affecting prey availability, sea ice, and breeding success across multiple species.
Wild penguin welfare involves both chronic welfare compromise from food insecurity and acute welfare crises from specific events. Breeding adults that must travel increasing distances to reach prey fish expend more energy than their body condition reserves can sustain, creating negative energy balance that affects their own welfare and their ability to provision chicks. Emperor penguin chicks hatched onto sea ice that melts prematurely face drowning and separation from parents before they can swim competently. African penguin chicks starving because anchovy and sardine prey have been displaced by fishing activity represent individual welfare crises at scale. The cumulative welfare impact across declining wild penguin populations is enormous and primarily driven by anthropogenic factors that are within our capacity to address.