Atlantic puffins face significant population declines linked to climate change and food scarcity, with welfare impacts on individual birds including starvation during breeding season.
Puffin welfare is increasingly determined by ecosystem-level changes that individual welfare interventions cannot address alone. Sandeels, the primary prey species for puffins during breeding, have shifted distribution northward as the North Sea warms, meaning puffins on traditional colonies must travel farther to find food and return to colonies with fewer fish. Chicks receiving insufficient fish during growth may die of starvation or fledge underweight, with poor survival prospects at sea. Adult birds forced to travel excessive distances to find food experience energetic stress that affects their own condition and reproductive investment. Plastic ingestion adds a direct welfare harm: puffins that mistake plastic fragments for fish feed them to chicks alongside real prey, contributing to nutritional deficit and potential intestinal injury. Island invasive predator removal programmes - eradicating rats, mink, and other predators from puffin colonies - provide immediate welfare benefits by dramatically improving chick survival rates and are among the most cost-effective marine bird conservation interventions available.