Migratory animals face extraordinary physiological and welfare challenges during long-distance journeys, compounded by human alterations to migration routes and stopover habitats.
Migratory animal welfare is shaped by the extreme physiological demands of long-distance movement and the quality of habitats at every point along migration routes. Birds arriving at stopover sites with depleted fat stores that have been converted to agriculture face starvation. Migrants timing their arrival to match food peaks that have shifted with climate change face breeding-season food scarcity. Protection of stopover habitats — coastal wetlands, grasslands, deciduous forests — provides welfare benefits to millions of individual migrants annually.