A compensation package to save the last Irish corncrakes, and help the farmers who protect them along the River Shannon, is being sought by BirdWatch Ireland as flooding has devastated the special breeding programme.
The conservation organisation said the 15 male birds counted in the census on the floodland meadows between Athlone and Banagher this year are not breeding because of adverse conditions.
Last year the callows held one-third of the country's summer breeding population of 154 calling males, but only 25 males made it back to the Shannon in May before the census began.
Researchers, who have been working with the 200 farm owners in the area to protect the bird, believe these birds left when flood waters began to rise.
BirdWatch Ireland's conservation officer, Ms Catherine Casey, says the compensation package agreed with farmers over the past 10 years not to cut their grass until after August 1st to allow breeding to take place would not suffice this year.
"The only chance for the survival of the corncrake on the Shannon this year is for the farmers to be compensated for not mowing the callows at all to allow for late breeding," she said.
"The farmers on the callows are having it just as tough as the corncrake because even if the weather takes up immediately, the quality of fodder that could be saved would be pretty useless," she said.
"We will be asking the Department of Agriculture and Food to provide a compensation package for the survival of both the farmer and the corncrake," she said.
She said the idea of compensating farmers for losses was not without precedent and had last happened in 1997 when there was a fodder shortage.
The farmers have been receiving €140 per hectare for farming in a corncrake friendly way by delaying meadow cutting until after August 1st and mowing meadows from the centre outwards. The remaining Irish corncrakes who come here to breed are now in western Donegal and on islands off that county.