A decade ago, the corncrake was headed for extinction. Once a common bird of farmland, found in every county, and quickly identified by its unmistakable “crex” call, its dramatic decline mirrored the advance of modern agricultural techniques.
By the early 1990s, breeding corncrakes were confined to remote western districts, as well as the grasslands of the Shannon Callows, where there were more than 100 breeding pairs.
However, even here, the introduction of a grant scheme for farmers to delay mowing to allow chicks time to fledge, or to cut fields starting in the centre, so allowing these ground-hugging birds a chance to escape the mower, were insufficient.
The corncrake saw its last days on the Callows in 2010 when two lonely males croaked their hearts out for the summer but were never visited by a female.
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All in all, the bird’s population crashed by 90 per cent in the past 40 years. The corncrake hung on in Donegal and Connemara but it seemed that despite everyone’s best efforts, this small summer migrant no longer had a future in Ireland.
However, in recent years the corncrake has had a remarkable rebound in its fortunes. From a low of 161 territories in 2021, in 2025 there were 281, the highest number since formal censusing began. The magic ingredient? A €5.9 million project, 73 per cent funded through the LIFE programme, an EU funding mechanism under way since 1992 to promote action on the environment and climate.
At a hearing of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy in January of this year, John Carey of the Corncrake/Traonach LIFE project (traonach is Irish for corncrake and LIFE is a French acronym denoting funding for the environment) explained how the team of 14 people, embedded in the communities of west Mayo and Donegal, worked in collaboration with farmers to improve conditions for the corncrake, enrolling 250 participants to manage 1,500 hectares of land.
Measures included predator control, conservation grazing with cattle, sowing of crops to provide early cover for birds arriving from Africa in spring, and restoring abandoned grasslands. Carey said the project would not have been possible without LIFE funding.
He told the committee: “For corncrakes, EU LIFE funding allowed for the tools to bring the corncrake back from the brink of extinction, and it has become a symbol of rejuvenation and co-operation in the rural landscape where it remains.”
This success is just one of a number of LIFE projects under way in Ireland which marry environmental objectives with scientific expertise and local involvement to deliver on the promises of EU directives, such as those for birds and habitats. These include the €25 million MPA LIFE which is expected to deliver Ireland’s commitment to protect 30 per cent of our seas in marine protected areas (MPAs) by 2030, and the €20 million Waters of LIFE project, which is safeguarding “pristine” water quality in six catchments in counties Cork, Wicklow, Clare, Kerry and Galway/Roscommon.
[ Surge in Irish corncrake numbers and in breeding territories, survey showsOpens in new window ]
The National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) is leading on four projects, including the one for corncrakes, with a combined value of €42.5 million. This is money that stays in the local community and while projects have a limited lifespan, usually around five to eight years, they typically go on to have lasting impacts. The much-lauded farming for nature programme in the Burren in Co Clare started off as a LIFE-funded initiative.
The Wild Atlantic Nature LIFE project is restoring blanket bogs along the western seaboard and in 2024 became the first Irish recipient of an EU Natura 2000 award. Such recognition brings international attention and Irish leadership to the areas of biodiversity restoration and climate action.
The director general of the NPWS, Niall O’Donnchu, told the Oireachtas committee that “sometimes it can be easy to forget that positive things are happening when it comes to biodiversity”.
“LIFE projects are demonstrating that specific actions can bring about improvements in the conservation status of habitats and species,” he said.
These benefits are being rolled out across Europe. In its current round (2024-2027), LIFE is distributing more than €5.4 billion for environmental initiatives. Perhaps its greatest success has been the recovery of the Iberian lynx, once among the rarest carnivores on Earth, but now doing well in the southern regions of Spain and Portugal.
Given this success, and the repeated assertions from EU leadership about the need to meet ecological goals, it is therefore surprising that the European Commission is now planning on scrapping LIFE as a stand-alone programme.
The current EU commissioner for the environment, Jessika Roswall, told the European Parliament in December 2025 that the commission wants to roll the LIFE programme into a new European Competitiveness Fund (ECF). She assured MEPs “that activities funded under LIFE would remain under the remit” of the new fund and that “LIFE activities have therefore been firmly anchored in the ECF”.
However, not everyone is convinced. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) decried the move as “inexplicable”, saying that “the commission risks defunding vital nature and climate action”.
Beate Aikens is senior advocacy officer at the WWF European Policy Office in Brussels. She says that LIFE has been a success story for over 30 years.
“The beauty of it is that it brings together multiple stakeholders on the ground such as farmers, fishers or local communities, national and regional authorities, civil society, researchers and companies.
“LIFE has been instrumental in providing member states with the support they need to implement environment and climate legislation. If we do not have LIFE in the next budget, all this will go away.”
She cites a recent report from the European Court of Auditors reviewing some of the bigger LIFE projects. “The court confirmed that this principle of co-operation works very well in practice,” she says.
“All of the monitoring has been very positive and has been proof that LIFE is delivering. I don’t dare to imagine what would happen if LIFE were to disappear. What would then bring stakeholders together?”
Aikens believes that the drive to abolish LIFE as a stand-alone programme is being driven by the perceived need for “simplification” and “flexibility”. She fears that the move would see money that had gone to nature shift to industrial objectives as well as giving individual countries the freedom to decide how the money should be spent. This would leave the funds more exposed to short-term political pressures when what is needed for climate and nature is long-term investment.
For now, abolishing LIFE as a stand-alone programme is just a proposal from the commission and it must get support from the European Parliament and member states if it is to pass.
Already a number of parliamentary committees and national environment ministries have called for LIFE to remain as it is and, although negotiations will run for some months yet, Aikens feels that countries such as Ireland need to make their voices heard.
For Ireland it comes at a time when the NPWS says that 90 per cent of our most important habitats are in “bad” or “inadequate” condition and as a draft Nature Restoration Plan is being prepared for submission to the commission. The State has yet to indicate how the work under this plan will be funded.
Contacted by The Irish Times, the Minister of State for Nature, Heritage and Biodiversity, Fianna Fáil’s Christopher O’Sullivan, said: “It’s incredibly disheartening that, right at the moment when member states are developing their first-ever nature restoration plans, the commission is proposing to take away the EU’s only dedicated environmental funding instrument.
“I feel strongly that the EU should do everything it can to save LIFE,” he added, saying he had made this point to Roswall and that she “understands Ireland’s position on this”.
Senator Malcolm Noonan, O’Sullivan’s predecessor in the previous government, says he doesn’t buy the commission’s assurances.
He called on the Government to “use its time in our upcoming presidency of the EU to champion not alone the LIFE Programme but also to ensure that there is a dedicated EU nature restoration fund in the next EU budget”.
Ireland, he says, “could leave an indelible mark” and could be “champions for nature by ensuring that dedicated funding remains in place. Wouldn’t that be a great story from one of the most nature-depleted countries in Europe?”
