The curlew is Britain's most at-risk breeding bird, facing catastrophic reproductive failure due to predation and habitat degradation on upland and lowland breeding grounds.
Curlew welfare focuses on chick survival - chicks that hatch into inadequate habitat face starvation as parents cannot locate sufficient prey to sustain them. Energetically demanding self-feeding chicks unable to find crane fly larvae and earthworms in dried, compacted ground experience a welfare crisis that typically results in death within days. Adult curlews incubating eggs exposed to agricultural operations suffer stress from disturbance and lose clutches that represent a significant proportion of annual reproductive effort. Conservation interventions including habitat management, legal predator control, and headstarting all have welfare implications that must be carefully balanced against population recovery goals.