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THE European Union is flying in to help rescue a rare bird in the Trough of Bowland.

A new project has been launched to achieve a secure and sustainable future for the hen harrier, one of the countrys most threatened birds of prey.

It will focus on seven areas, including the United Utilities Bowland Estate in East Lancashire, designated as nesting sites under the European Union Birds Dir-ective.

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The Hen Harrier LIFE+ Project will last for five years and will include direct conservation action, comm-unity engagement, and awareness-raising meas-ures.

Between 2004 and 2010 there was an 18 per cent decline in the UK hen harrier population, accor-ding to the National Hen Harrier Survey.

Last year, hen harriers suffered their worst breeding season in England in decades failing to rear a single chick anywhere in England.

While they fared slightly better with four nests in England this year, natural deaths and the sudden, unexplained disappearances of three satellite-tagged birds including two from Bowland, mean that only nine of the 16 chicks fledged are thought to still be alive.

Project manager Blnaid Denman said: Hen harriers are in dire straits. Numbers are declining dramatically and urgent action is needed, which is why this European-funded project is both welcome and timely.

The cross-border project provides a huge boost to our efforts to protect hen harriers.

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European Union swoops in to help save hen harrier

European Union leaders struck a deal on a new target to cut carbon emissions by 2030 to at least 40 percent below 1990 levels, calling it a new global standard, but critics warned that compromises had undermined the fight against climate change. Poland had fought to spare its coal industry and other states tweaked the guideline text on global warming to protect varied economic interests, including nuclear plants, cross-border power lines and farmers whose livestock belch out polluting methane. The 28-nation bloc has already nearly met an existing goal of a 20-percent cut by 2020, in part because communist-era industry in the east collapsed.

EU leaders called the 40-percent target an ambitious signal to the United States and China to follow suit at a U.N. climate summit in France in December 2015. But environmentalists have complained that the EU's own experts say it must make an at least 80-percent cut by 2050 to limit the rise in global average temperatures to two degrees Celsius. And they were further disappointed by a softening in the final agreement of goals for increasing the use of solar, wind and other renewable energy sources and for improving efficiency through insulation, cleaner engines and the like.

First published October 23 2014, 5:24 PM

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Critics Slam EU's New Deal on 40 Percent Carbon Cut

7 hours ago by Monika Scislowska Activists dressed as corporate lobbyists hold bags of coal and put up blackened hands as they demonstrate outside an EU summit in Brussels, on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014. Demonstrators called for EU leaders to resist pressure by the fossil fuel industry and agree an EU 2030 climate and energy package. EU leaders will gather Thursday for a two-day summit in which they will discuss energy and climate change. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

European Union leaders meeting in Brussels to set their new greenhouse gas emissions plan are facing staunch opposition from coal-reliant Poland and other East European countries who say their economies would suffer from the new target.

Poland says it's ready to veto the plan that would oblige the bloc's 28 states to jointly cut their greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below the 1990 levels by the year 2030. The EU plan would also require climate-friendly, renewable energy to provide 27 percent of the bloc's needs and demand that energy efficiency increase by a third in the next 16 years.

Poland says that pace is too fast for Eastern European countries that are trying to grow their economies as they restructure old, energy-dependent industries.

Almost 90 percent of Poland's electricity comes from coal. The nation intends to continue that way for decades because mining creates 100,000 direct jobs and many thousands more in related sectors. Warsaw argues that green energy, large wind farms and solar panels still create energy that is too expensive.

But a failure to set the new emissions goal at the two-day European summit starting Thursday would delay the groundwork for a crucial global climate deal that is expected to be signed in Paris next year. It would also undermine the EU's position as the leader in the global push to reduce the carbon emissions that scientists say are driving climate change.

"The objective is to agree ... (on) the world's most ambitious, yet cost-effective and fair climate and energy policy framework for the next decade," EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy said.

Last month Poland and five other countries that rely on fossil fuels said while they agree with the need to cut emissions, they will not be forced into any legally binding deals that overlook the realities of their economies.

The emission reduction targets "must be set realistically," said a statement signed by Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary.

Those nations say the proposed EU targets would raise their energy prices and slow down their developing industries at a time when they are still recovering from the global economic crisis.

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Coal-rich Poland ready to block EU climate deal

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