This is a question which David Suddaby, who directs a BirdWatch Ireland habitat restoration project in Mayo, gets asked a lot. He has a standard and passionate response.

"Let me stop you right there. Conservationists need farmers. There is no conservation without them."

Habitat restoration has become a hot topic among ecologists. It has not yet acquired the public familiarity of that other green buzzword, biodiversity, but the two are closely linked. Given the accelerating rate of habitat loss worldwide, it is becoming increasingly evident that, as the song says, we can't have one without the other.

A rich mosaic of wildlife obviously cannot exist outside the framework of the habitat which sustains it. Wetlands, for example, provide the conditions for a unique community of plants and animals. When a fen or marsh is drained, that community will be impoverished and many species will disappear from that site. And when wetlands themselves become, as it were, an endangered species, those plants and animals that depend upon them face extinction.

Widespread drainage, for intensive agriculture and for building, has greatly reduced wetland habitats in Ireland. over the last century. Corncrakes are only the best-known victims of this decline.

The red-necked phalarope is another. This is a dainty little wader with, for a bird, most unusual sexual habits. The female is more attractively coloured than the male, takes the dominant role in courtship, and then refuses all child-rearing duties except laying the eggs.

This phalarope, always rare here, bred regularly late in the last century only at Annagh Marsh, near Termoncarragh Lake on the Mullet peninsula in Co Mayo. Drainage in the surrounding area, however, combined with lack of grazing, finally made the marsh unsuitable for phalaropes, and breeding probably ceased in the early 1980s.

Termoncarragh is also a significant potential site for the corncrake, Greenland white-fronted goose and barnacle goose. They are all, along with the phalarope, birds recognised as having "Annex 1 Priority" by the EU. This prompted BirdWatch Ireland to form a project partnership with Teagasc, the semi-state body responsible for agricultural advisory services for farmers. The project receives EU funding under the LIFE-Nature programme to restore these two habitats.

This is where the farmers come in. The project offered a showcase for enhanced versions of the EU's Rural Environment Protection Schemes (REPS). These are designed to reward farmers financially for working in an environmentally friendly manner.

Suddaby has spread the word among locals, usually operating on a one-to-one basis. A good number of farmers are now participating in management schemes, both in leasing agreements on land purchased by BWI on Annagh Marsh, and on their own farms.

Such management can involve "wasting" land - leaving it ungrazed so that the corncrake can have early cover to breed when it (hopefully) arrives in April. But it can just as easily involve reintroducing grazing into marshy areas. Habitat restoration is rarely, if ever, about letting "nature" run rampant. Human agricultural activity, as long as it is not intensive, is often an essential ingredient in the maintenance of habitat we regard as "wild".

Suddaby is reasonably happy with progress to date, especially with the establishment of three corncrake territories in the area this year. But despite the recreation of a suitable mosaic of open water, emergent swamp vegetation and wet and dry marsh for the decidedly picky phalarope, the star attraction has yet to show up.

"We can't guarantee it will come back," he concedes. "But our work is really based on creating wider biodiversity, benefiting a whole suite of species." Scarce breeding birds like lapwing have increased by 50 per cent, and redshank have returned to nest .

On the other side of the country - and conveniently near BWI's new headquarters in Newcastle, Co Wicklow, the organisation had identified another potential hotspot for birds. This is at Black Ditch, a part of the coastal system known as the Murrough that runs from Greystones to Wicklow town.

Extensive drainage, through ditches, clearance and tree-planting, has transformed much of an area of fen and woodland into fields for grazing and silage over the past 100 years. With suitable land management, BWI believes Black Ditch could attract Greenland white-fronted geese in winter, and support breeding populations of little egrets, kingfishers and tree sparrows.

LIFE-Nature funding was secured last year, and a four-year restoration plan is now well under way. Walking around the perimeter on a squelchingly wet September morning, BWI director Oran O'Sullivan was able to show me very few birds, but an impressive range of changes in the landscape.

Long rows of leylandii cypresses, which had sucked up the ground water, had been removed. Many of the drainage ditches remain, but now they will retain water rather than run it off the land. Their shape has been changed from a deep "U to a shallow "V" to foster marsh vegetation. They have also been opened up so that cattle can graze right along them.

As a result, fresh reed beds are already springing up. Much less visibly, but just as vitally, insect communities are rapidly expanding due to the new growth and by the presence of feeding cattle. This is an ecological plus in itself, and a rich source of food for birds.

These changes required intensive labour, heavy machinery, and the continued presence of cattle. This again involves positive working relationships with local farmers, who barter machinery and time for grazing rights. The project retains a large area of fen. This will provide shelter for more secretive birds, and perhaps nesting sites for egrets.

But wide open grazing spaces are also being maintained, and these will, hopefully, attract geese. Crops have been planted over a large area, offering them - as well as finches and buntings - a tempting food source.

Assuming all goes according to plan, a patchwork of suitable habitats should have been restored in three years' time. But O'Sullivan knows that many variables are involved, and that nature is by definition unpredictable.

"We'll get the right habitat mix," he says confidently, and then pauses: "but that does not mean that all the birds we expect will come. Geese like to return to traditional feeding grounds, and may simply never make it here."

Like Suddaby, however, he believes that recovering this habitat, so strategically placed between bird-rich wetlands at Kilcoole and Broadlough, will be beneficial to a wide range of species.

ONLINE:

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Photo montage above: Annagh March, on the Mullet peninsula in Co Mayo, before and after the EU-supported project was put into action aimed at getting the red-necked phalarope (centre) to breed here again