Small mammals including field voles, wood mice and bank voles play critical ecological roles. Their welfare is affected by habitat quality, predation and seasonal food availability.
Small mammal welfare is largely invisible because these animals are rarely seen and difficult to study. Yet voles and mice experience genuine welfare challenges: predation pressure that requires constant vigilance, winter food scarcity that causes starvation in cold spells, and habitat destruction through agricultural intensification. The relationship between small mammal welfare and ecosystem health is direct - a landscape with healthy vole populations supports the barn owls, kestrels and weasels that depend on them. Habitat management that improves small mammal welfare simultaneously improves the entire predator-prey ecosystem.