The weasel is Britain's smallest carnivore and one of its most poorly understood mammals. Population trends are uncertain and the species faces numerous threats in modern agricultural landscapes.
Weasel welfare intersects with their management as predator species and their vulnerability to trapping. Fenn and similar spring traps used legally for stoat control also kill weasels non-selectively. Individual weasels caught in non-target trap situations may suffer before death depending on trap setting precision. At the population level, agricultural landscape changes reducing hedgerow cover and prey availability create cumulative welfare pressure on a species with no formal conservation monitoring programme in the UK.