Curlews breeding in Welsh uplands and lowland grasslands face severe population collapse with targeted conservation schemes offering welfare-positive interventions.
Welsh curlew populations on the edge of functional breeding failure represent a welfare and conservation emergency. Breeding pairs that fail year after year invest energy in migration and territory establishment that yields no reproductive output. Chicks killed by predators die traumatically. The emergency interventions including nest protection and headstarting chicks from failed nests represent intensive welfare support for a species at the boundary of regional extinction.