Life Grassbirdhabitat Conservation Tender

Duration 01-NOV-2020 to 31-OCT -2030Total budget 27061079.00 EU contribution 12000000.00 Project descriptionBackgroundGrassland breeding bird populations have declined dramatically throughout Europe. Modern agricultural land use practices almost all over Europe and more recently also in the wintering areas in Africa are the main cause of this decline. The most important threats are the increasing intensification of the land use practices including increasing drainage of formerly wet grasslands habitat loss e.g. due to a shift from species-rich grasslands to grassland monocultures intensively used mineral and organic fertilizer use of pesticides landscape fragmentation ground water depletion and negative impacts from adjacent areas. Furthermore a large increase in predator densities especially invasive like red fox mustelids racoon racoon dog and American mink represents an additional threat to the ground nesting birds. Policy efforts and conservation measures to counteract these declines on a large landscape scale at EU level have failed so far. Therefore strategic actions for the conservation of wet meadow breeding birds in the Atlantic region are needed covering breeding sites stop-over sites and wintering sites in West Africa.Lower Saxony provides the most important breeding sites for wet grassland birds in Germany. For example a significant proportion of the of the worlds breeding population of the black-tailed godwit Limosa limosa occurs in Germany and the Netherlands. Hence the Federal State Lower Saxony and the province of Friesland Netherlands have a particular international responsibility for this species and this applies for many other grassland breeding species. In the last 20 years the area of permanent grassland in Germany has declined by more than 12 and in Lower Saxony by around 31.ObjectivesThe main objective of the LIFE IP GrassBirdHabitat project is improving the conservation status of wet grassland breeding birds. This includes measures that increase the breeding populations and reproduction rates in Germany and the Netherlands and returning rates of the birds from their wintering areas in West Africa. Optimising water levels of the breeding habitats will be done on both public and private land. On private land long-term leasing agreements will allow farmers to remain land owners and be financially compensated for increased water levels and land management for meadow nesting birds. The total project area will be around 143 000 ha. In Lower Saxony Germany 19 000 ha is public land while another 2 000 ha will be acquired for bird protection through complementary funds to enable arable land to be converted into biodiverse wet meadows. In Friesland conservation management in two pilot areas totalling 100 ha will be used to demonstrate ecological and economic sustainability and to motivate farmers to participate in grassland conservation. Additionally measures t