EU grants BirdLife Malta almost €0.5 million

The European Union has granted almost €500,000 to BirdLife Malta to be used for a specific project dealing with the protection of the Puffinus Yelkouan bird.

The project submitted by Birdlife was one of 61 chosen by the EU under the Life Natura programme, which will come to an end this year and be replaced by a new programme called Life +.

A total of 228 projects were submitted for funding from across the 25 member states and the accession countries.

The BirdLife project was the first Maltese project to be selected by the European Commission under Life Natura. Although other projects had been submitted in the past none had been selected.

The EU will be granting a total of €458,866, representing 50 per cent of the cost of the project entitled SPA Site And Sea Actions Saving Puffinus Yelkouan In Malta.

The project, which started being implemented last September and which will be spread over a period of 46 months, aims to reverse the decline and increase the Yelkouan shearwater population at Rdum tal-Madonna, limits of Mellieha, a designated Special Protection Area and host to the largest colony of Yelkouan shearwater on the islands. According to the project proposal, the colony consists of 500 of the 1,500 breeding pairs in the Maltese islands.

The Commission said that over the past 25 years, the shearwater, a species of strategic importance at the European level, has been in decline in Malta and is under threat because of premature mortality, loss of breeding habitats, and human disturbance at nesting sites. The EU funds will help BirdLife reverse this situation. The Life programme is the EU's financial instrument supporting environmental and nature conservation projects throughout the EU's member states and in some candidate, acceding and neighbouring countries. Since 1992, the programme has co-financed about 2,750 projects in the EU, contributing about €135 billion towards the protection of the environment. The programme has three components, Life Environment, Life Natura and Life Third Countries.

Life Natura is specifically aimed at contributing towards the implementation of the Habitats and Birds directives and, in particular, the Natura 2000 European network. The other two components of the programme, Life Environment and Life Third Countries, focus respectively on demonstrating innovative environmental techniques and on environmental capacity building in countries bordering the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea.

Malta has never been granted a project under Life Environment. Before accession, Malta was given €300,000 under the Life Third Countries component to build the first coastal nature reserve in Dwejra.

As from 2007, the Life programme will be replaced by Life+, which will run from 2007-2013 with a budget of about €2.1 billion.

Contacted by The Times, BirdLife's executive director Tolga Temuge said his organisation was very excited about the project, which will herald the beginning of a new scientific experience in Malta. He said the project was very well received in Brussels and will be conducted with the collaboration of many experts in the area, both local and foreign. The project will also involve satellite monitoring of birds - a first for Malta, he added.

"We hope this project will set an example of excellence in this field. This will hopefully lead to other projects by other organisations obtaining funds from the EU."