Barn owl numbers fall as grasslands are lost
BARN owls are starving to death because of changes to the way farm land is managed.
Wildlife experts say the owls are struggling to conceive and abandoning their young because there is too little food.
Grassland has been lost since the set-aside scheme, where farmers were encouraged to leave fields fallow, was scrapped in 2008.
This had led to a big decline in the population of short-tailed vole, an owl staple.
In Suffolk alone, two-thirds of barn owls nesting in specially-built boxes have not produced any young.
The survival rate of chicks is also lower with birdwatchers in the county reporting a large number of dead or emaciated young. RSPB experts fear that the same will be seen in barn owl populations around the country as habitats decline and food supplies suffer.
The barn owl is classed as an “amber” risk, with a 25 to 50 per cent decline in numbers in 25 years. If the population of 3,000 to 5,000 drops by over 50 per cent it will join the UK’s critical red list.
An RSPB spokesman said: “The loss of set aside land has been a potentially devastating blow for conservation as it provided a refuge for species in an otherwise intensive agricultural landscape.”