Some of the West’s most endangered farmland birds face being wiped out because the European Union is axing payments to farmers who look after wildlife on their land.

The RSPB has warned that some of the region’s crucial and successful schemes to encourage farmers to protect rare birds will end if the EU budget cuts target environmental payments.

Projects like the chalkland bird scheme in Wiltshire and Dorset, and schemes to protect birds on Exmoor and the Somerset Levels face being axed when the EU unveils its new budget next week.

Conservationists estimate that the future of at least 10 of the West’s most-loved farmland birds will face an uncertain future, or even extinction, if these plans to axe projects happen.

European Union ministers have faced long-term pressure to reform the Common Agricultural Policy, which subsidises farmers.

But one of its success stories has been the payments made to farmers who enhance and protect the environment.

Now the RSPB has warned that the rare species will suffer, and the West’s multi-million pound nature tourism industry will too, if cuts go ahead.

Martin Harper, the RSPB’s conservation director, said: “Our countryside has faced many threats, but this is really savage – we’re staggered.

“Rewarding farmers for protecting threatened wildlife has provided a lifeline to many sensitive species, which would otherwise have ebbed away.

“If the EU continues with this plan, there is no doubt wildlife will suffer.”

The West’s RSPB representative said the region’s farmers had long backed projects which saw them leave bird-friendly areas, maintain hedges, delay harvesting and erect bird boxes to help a wide variety of bird species, from the barn owl to the stone curlew.

“In the first place this will have a devastating effect on birds as diverse as the corn bunting, lapwing and tree sparrow in the West,” said Tony Whitehead.

“Should these cuts be introduced we’d genuinely fear for the future of birds such as chough, cirl bunting and stone curlew, all of which have benefited from the hard work of farmers, with the support of EU payments.

“But it goes much deeper. The south west’s world famous landscapes don’t manage themselves.

“We don’t get magnificent National Parks if farmers and landowners can’t do the right thing for the environment.

“Risk these places and the south west will be a poorer place – tourism is our biggest economy. Visitors come here because it is beautiful. It won’t stay like that if we cut off the lifeblood to environmental land management.”

Now the RSPB is working with conservationists from across Europe to get the EU and its president Jose Manuel Barroso, who pledged to reverse the decline in the environment last year, to change its mind.

“Slashing funding for farmers who take action for wildlife would be a devastating blow to the environment and the long-term future of farming,” said Mr Harper.

“Last year the EU under President Barroso’s leadership pledged to halt the decline in wildlife by 2020.

“If he approves this budget, the President risks erasing wildlife from the map of Europe, breaking promises and undermining decades of conservation effort, which has spared the greatest wildlife losses. Cuts to agri-environment funding would be totally unacceptable.”