Barn owls are specialist predators of agricultural landscapes, but modernized farming has reduced the prey, nest sites, and rough grassland they depend on. Supporting barn owls benefits both wildlife and farmers.
Barn owl welfare at the population level is determined primarily by landscape structure. Owls that cannot find sufficient prey experience starvation — a slow death particularly likely in severe winters when snow cover makes prey inaccessible. Breeding pairs unable to find adequate nest sites lose their young to predators or exposure. Road mortality and rodenticide poisoning impose acute welfare harms: poison-exposed owls may suffer internal hemorrhage for days before dying. Individual welfare interventions — nest box provision, roadside vegetation management to reduce collision risk, and elimination of rodenticide use — directly reduce these harms. At the landscape level, maintaining field margins, hedgerows, and rough grassland provides the prey base without which barn owl populations cannot be sustained.