The maintenance of habitat quality is a key issue for the conservation of biodiversity. For wader populations foraging and nesting in wet grasslands, grazing is a major driver of habitat quality. Our objective is to investigate how livestock grazing may be used to sustain wader biodiversity without penalizing farmers. We develop a model that described the temporal dynamics of (1) a grass sward controlled by grazing where the viability of grazing depends on technical and economical constraints linked to feeding costs for farmers and (2) a community of three wader species formalised using an age-structured matrix model that incorporates explicitly the impact of sward structure on the vital rates of each species. The results show that grazing is a key component to prevent extinction of wader community. In absence of grazing the growth of sward during the breeding season does not allow the development of a favourable sward structure. According to habitat quality targeted (optimal or sub optimal) different viable grazing strategies emerge and some are more cost-effective than others. Our results are discussed in the light of agri-environment schemes aimed at bird conservation in Europe and highlight the need to develop integrated modelling approaches linking agricultural and conservation issues.