Last stand of the Baltic eagle

By Ben Nimmo Jun 8, 2007, 11:14 GMT

Riga - The European Union is one of the most ecologically- aware societies the world has ever seen, but its expansion is now threatening rare species in its new member states with disaster.

'In 2003, the year before Latvia joined the EU, there were estimated to be just under 4,000 pairs of lesser spotted eagles in Latvia. Since then, the population in some parts of the country has fallen by up to 30 per cent,' Dr Ugis Bergmanis, Latvia's leading researcher on the species, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The lesser spotted eagle is the Baltic states' most distinctive bird of prey. Of an estimated worldwide population of 14,000 pairs, almost two-thirds live in the Baltic states and Poland.

Its Latin name, Aquila pomarina, derives from the Baltic province of Pomerania in neighbouring Germany - a region where the eagles flourished until well into the twentieth century.

But the post-war forestry boom devastated eagle habitats there. By 2004, Germany's total population had fallen to just 112 pairs.

And the economic boom which accompanied the Baltic states' EU accession has dealt the eagles another blow in the very territories which were once seen as their last refuge.

'Even 10 years ago, we wouldn't have thought this was possible. Now, the whole situation has changed,' Bergmanis said.

Bergmanis sees three reasons for the sharp decline. Firstly, the eagles migrate from the Baltics to sub-Saharan Africa every winter, and the migration route is far from safe.

'The birds usually fly via Turkey, Syria, Israel and Egypt, and people there shoot them without mercy. Sometimes they fly via Greece, and they get shot there - in an EU country!' Bergmanis said.

In Latvia, meanwhile, the privatization of great swathes of forest land in the mid-1990s led to a surge in tree-felling. Between 1992 and 2003, the amount of timber felled on privately-owned land almost trebled, devastating the eagles' traditional habitats.

'If people go on at this rate, pretty soon there won't be anything left to fell on private land,' Bergmanis said grimly.

The business boom generated by EU membership was part of that process. Between 2002 and 2005, Latvian timber exports grew by over 50 per cent, with the vast majority going to older EU states.

'It's all about the economy. Forestry firms pay taxes, support the budget, pay teachers and doctors; eagles don't,' Bergmanis said.

Simultaneously, EU membership stimulated a wave of intensified farming. Between 2003 and 2006, the amount of land devoted to agriculture in Latvia jumped by almost a third.

That sudden intensification has devastated the habitat of the field mice which constitute the eagles' main prey.

'A year ago, this was a meadow. Now they've ploughed it, harrowed it, sown it and covered the ground in chemicals - you won't find many mice living here,' Bergmanis said, standing in a bare brown field just metres from an eagle's nest.

'Man can't live where there's no food. Nor can eagles,' he added.

But the EU could yet prove to be the eagles' hope. In recent years, carefully-targeted regeneration policies in Western Europe have allowed threatened species to re-colonize territories where they had died out decades or centuries ago.

And with European agricultural policy apparently beginning to turn in favour of less environmentally-harmful farming methods, the wholesale devastation of woodland and meadows could soon give way to a more balanced approach. That would only benefit the eagles.

'There is hope. What we need to do is bring the intensive farming and forestry under control,' Bergmanis said.

But at present, the economic boom which the EU helped inspire is threatening to sound the birds' death-knell.

'Right now, it looks like we're repeating the mistakes they made in the West 40 years ago,' Bergmanis said.