EU 'put Portugal wildlife under threat' - BBC

[Eugene]

Source: BBC News

Last Updated: Sunday, 8 April 2007, 06:41 GMT 07:41 UK

EU 'put Portugal wildlife under threat'

More than half Portugal's wildlife has come under threat of extinction
since the country joined the European Union 20 years ago - and massive
redevelopment made possible by EU cash is at least partly to blame,
environmental groups have told the BBC.

The Portuguese Institute of Nature Conservation's list of all the species
either in grave danger or on the brink of extinction amounts to nearly
half of the country's wildlife.

And environmentalists say that the threat has come from the impact
of years of intensive development, funded by grants from the European
Union.

"Portugal became a democracy in the mid-1970s and then joined the
EU in the mid-1980s - and that's brought a lot of inward investment,"
Eduardo Goncalves of environmental group WWF told BBC World
Service's One Planet programme.

"All of that money has been plunged into roads and dams, and things
that haven't been planned very carefully."

-snip-

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6530743.stm