Millions of straw-coloured fruit bats gather at Kasanka National Park in Zambia each year in the world's largest mammal migration, facing hunting and disturbance welfare threats.
Straw-coloured fruit bats hunted at roost sites suffer acute welfare impacts from being shot, trapped, or knocked from trees. Nursing mothers killed during the migration abandon dependent pups that die of starvation. The concentrated nature of the aggregation makes welfare impacts highly scalable: a single night's intensive hunting can kill thousands of individuals. Protected roost sites within national parks provide some welfare protection but surrounding unprotected areas face unregulated hunting.