North America has lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970, a crisis with profound welfare implications for individual animals and the ecosystems they inhabit.
The scale of bird population decline represents enormous individual animal welfare harm. Billions of individual animals have died prematurely from preventable causes. Birds that survive habitat loss face chronic food insecurity, reduced nesting success, and physiological stress from environmental changes. The welfare of wild songbirds is intimately connected to the health of the ecosystems they inhabit — degraded habitats mean degraded welfare for every bird living in them.