Advanced research into arctic tern welfare across their extraordinary annual migrations reveals the welfare challenges individual birds face across breeding, migration, and wintering periods.
Individual arctic terns GPS-tracked across their extraordinary migrations are providing unprecedented welfare insights into the challenges of the longest migration of any animal. Individual variation in migration routes, breeding success, and body condition at different life stages reveals welfare constraints that colony-level monitoring cannot detect. This individual welfare perspective is informing both conservation management of UK breeding colonies and advocacy for African and Antarctic habitat protection.