An international effort to protect the corncrake, one of Europe's most endangered species, was announced yesterday by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
Corncrakes are in decline all over Europe and are close to extinction in Britain. This is mainly because of the intensification of agriculture, which has led farmers to cut grass for hay and silage much earlier in the year, destroying the birds' main habitat.
Biologists from 23 countries met in Gdansk, Poland, this week and agreed to make agriculture more corncrake-friendly. Barbara Young, chief executive of the RSPB, said: "Governments must adopt sustainable policies for European agriculture."
Corncrakes betray their presence by the rasping "crek-crek" call of the male. The number of calling males in Britain, where the birds are confined almost entirely to Scottish islands, fell from 3,000 in 1968 to only 488 last year. There are no more than 2,650 in the European Union as a whole.
Corncrake numbers can be raised by persuading farmers to mow their fields later in the year and use methods that give nesting birds a chance to escape. The number of calling males on the Hebridean island of Tiree has risen from 100 to 126 since the RSPB began paying crofters to adopt such techniques six years ago.
