The Great Horned Owl is not a threatened species. Its adaptability to various habitats and its varied diet give it a survival advantage. However, that doesn’t mean that individual owls don’t fall in harms way. Though they are protected by law in most countries, Great Horned Owls are still occasionally shot by humans and many die from collisions with vehicles, buildings, barbed wire fences, windows, and power lines. Additionally, inadvertent poisoning via rat poison and other rodenticides is a particularly concerning (though easily preventable) problem: rodents consume the poison, owls consumes the sick rodents, and are then sickened or killed themselves.