The corn bunting has declined catastrophically on UK farmland. Understanding its welfare needs helps advocates make the case for agricultural policy reform.
Corn bunting welfare is directly shaped by agricultural policy choices that determine how farmland is managed. Winter survival - the most critical welfare period - depends on seed availability from retained stubbles and wild bird seed strips. Without these, corn buntings face starvation on intensively managed arable farms that have nothing to offer them between harvest and spring. Agri-environment scheme payments that incentivise stubble retention and seed mixes provide direct welfare benefit to individual birds. The scale of the corn bunting's decline - 90% in 50 years - represents a welfare catastrophe caused primarily by policy decisions about agricultural support.