Barn owls are among the best monitored UK birds with detailed welfare data available, showing a population that fluctuates with vole availability and faces ongoing threats from roads, rodenticides, and habitat loss.
Barn owls killed on roads suffer acute trauma. Anticoagulant poisoning from eating rodenticide-affected prey causes internal bleeding that is gradual and debilitating before death. Vole crashes cause starvation of adults and abandonment of broods. These are individually suffering animals in a population subject to multiple welfare threats simultaneously. Reducing rodenticide use and managing road-adjacent habitat for safer foraging are the most impactful individual interventions.