LIFE Integrated Project
Welcome to the website of the LIFE IP GrassBirdHabitats project, an EU-funded initiative dedicated to protecting meadow birds and their habitats. Our goal is to create and connect optimal breeding and non-breeding areas along the East Atlantic Flyway.
The project focuses on habitat conservation and restoration in Lower Saxony (Germany) and Fryslân (the Netherlands) while also developing a strategic conservation plan for the Atlantic region of Europe and West Africa.
The project will run for ten years. It started in November 2020 and will be concluded by the end of October 2030.
What we do
To improve the conservation status of meadow birds along the East Atlantic Flyway, a team of more than 40 people is carrying out various measures. Their common goal is to increase the birds' reproduction rates in the Netherlands and Germany and to improve their return rates from their wintering grounds in West Africa.
Our focus species
Transmitter birds
In six years of challenging field work, we have tagged more than 380 adult and juvenile Black-tailed Godwits in total, and collected more than 256,000 locations. We use lightweight GPS transmitters with lots of different sensors to gain detailed movement and behavioural data from the birds.
With this information, we want to improve conservation measures for Black-tailed Godwits and other meadow birds along the East Atlantic Flyway.
The project in numbers
0 mil. € out of 353 mil. €
complementary funding acquired
0 ha
total project area
0 %
of all European Black-tailed Godwits breed in Germany and the Netherlands
0 birds
tagged with GPS transmitters
Where we work
Our project areas comprise the core breeding areas of meadow birds in the north-western European Plain (in Lower Saxony and Fryslân) and their core stopover and wintering sites along the East Atlantic Flyway.
