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What is LIFE?

The LIFE programme (Financial Instrument for the Environment) is one of the European Commission’s main financial tools to support projects in the fields of environment and climate. It is open to public and private applicants and aims to promote and finance innovative projects in areas such as species and habitat conservation, soil protection, air and water quality improvement, waste management and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Objective: save the Crau Plain Grasshopper from probable extinction

The species is classified as “critically endangered” on all red lists: global, European, national and regional. Since January 2007, it is protected in France. The actions of the LIFE SOS Crau Crau Grasshopper are focused on four major objectives:

  1. Increase the area of favourable habitat by reopening the coussoul and adapting grazing management.
  2. Reduce threats such as predation by insectivorous birds in colonies by studying, monitoring and managing the nesting sites of these species.
  3. Improve the captive breeding of the Crau Plain Grasshopper and start a reintroduction programme.
  4. Communicate, educate and raise awareness of the Crau Plain Grasshopper, its preservation issues and its ecosystem via communication tools, training, sharing and dissemination of technical results.

The Crau Plain Grasshopper is a so-called “umbrella” species. The preservation of this very rare and threatened species means protecting its natural habitat and all the species associated with this habitat.

 

Public involvement

Various audiences will be involved on a local, regional, national and international scale: the general public, schoolchildren, farmers and shepherds, naturalists and experts, local politicians and landowners.

News

 
Communicating and raising awareness

Grasshopper more real than nature !?

Published: Mai 11 2023

Finally you can observe them – for real! Or almost…

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Communicating and raising awareness

Spring 2023: event season!

Published: Mai 05 2023

This spring, our team has prepared a whole programme to discover the Crau Plain Grasshopper

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Breeding and reintroduction

First hatchings 2023

Published: Avril 24 2023

The first hatchings of Crau Plain Grasshopper in 2023 took place at the beginning of April and observations of the first juveniles are multiplying by the day!

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Communicating and raising awareness

Didactic and artistic objects for the Crau Plain Grasshopper

Published: Avril 14 2023

She cuts, assembles, glues, paints and articulates pieces of paper. She sculpts organic figures, plants, animals, then animates them. Her works transpire a naturalist sensitivity at the “edge of the brush”.

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