Corn buntings have declined by 90% in the UK since the 1970s, disappearing from much of their former range. Their welfare and survival depend on cereal farmland managed with sufficient insect prey and nesting cover.
Corn bunting decline represents the welfare harm of agricultural intensification at population scale: the loss of most UK corn buntings over 50 years reflects millions of individual bird lives lost from an ecosystem increasingly hostile to them. At the individual level, corn buntings breeding in cereal fields face nest destruction and chick mortality from machinery at one of the most critical life stages. Late breeding synchronised with harvest means that second and third brood chicks are particularly vulnerable. Agri-environment management that benefits corn buntings - overwinter stubble providing seed food, reduced pesticide use maintaining invertebrates, and field corner grass cover for nesting - simultaneously improves the welfare environment for many other farmland species. The corn bunting's persistence only in the most sympathetically managed agricultural landscapes demonstrates the direct link between farming practice and wildlife welfare.