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The effects of EU aid funds are scaring storks away from Poland, says Poland’s bird protection society.

Grants offered to farmers for growing energy crops have caused traditional stork habitats in north-eastern Poland to dwindle as thousands of hectares of wetlands were dried for planting willow. The process was halted by environment protection authorities only last year.

“Tall grass has already grown on parts of the afforested land. Storks could not find food there and moved somewhere else,” says Piotr Hryszko from a research station run by the Polish Bird Protection Society in Zywkowo. Called “the stork village”,  Zykowo has seen its stork population fall by almost a half.

Polish birds are most likely migrating in search of food to Lithuania, Belarus and the Kaliningrad district, so much so that their numbetr in north-eastern Poland declined by 30 percent this year.

But there is hope that they will come back thanks, ironically, to EU aid funds granted to farmers who follow environmental protection rules in production – for example – mow grasslands regularly without destroying small rodents on which storks feed.  (kk)

Source:Przekroj