The Oostvaardersplassen () is a nature reserve in Flevoland, the Netherlands, managed by the Staatsbosbeheer (state forestry service). Covering about in the province of Flevoland, it is an experiment in rewilding. It is in a publicly owned polder created in 1968. The land was reclaimed from the sea and was originally intended for industrial development, but was found to be unsuitable for cultivation. The site was then abandoned and greylag geese began inhabiting the area. Frans Vera, a Dutch biologist, was the principal investigator of the Oostvaardersplassen starting in the late 1970s. By 1989, its ecological interest had resulted in its being declared a Ramsar wetland. It became part of Nieuw Land National Park when that was established in 2018.

Geography

The Oostvaardersplassen is located in the municipality of Lelystad, between the towns of Lelystad and Almere, in the province of Flevoland in the Netherlands, just north of Amsterdam.

Before the establishment of the reserve, the dry area was a nursery for willow trees, and in the first year hundreds of seedlings could be found on each square metre. This led to concern that a dense woodland would develop, significantly reducing the value of the habitat for water birds. To avoid this, the park's managers brought in a number of large herbivores to keep the area more open, including Konik horses, red deer and Heck cattle. These large grazing animals are kept out in the open all year round without supplemental feeding for the winter and early spring, and are allowed to behave as wild animals (without, for example, for now, castrating males). Allowing grazing animals had caused the vegetation of the Oostvaardersplassen to become stress-tolerant, low in stature, and more open and homogenous with a higher species richness as compared to areas that are left ungrazed. The ecosystem developing under their influence is thought to resemble those that would have existed on European river banks and deltas before human disturbance. However, there is some controversy about how natural the ecosystem is because it is a fenced in area with limited space, there are currently no wildlife corridors to connect the reserve to other places, it has a pumping station to control and prevent floods, and the area lacks large predators to keep the large numbers of herbivores in check, such as the Eurasian wolf, Eurasian brown bear and Eurasian lynx. The only native large herbivores now missing from Oostvaardersplassen are the elk (Alces alces), the roe deer "formerly present in the park", the wild boar and the wisent. There is a chance that the wild boar will find its way naturally from the Veluwe.

{| class="wikitable"

|-

| Head count ||style="text-align:right"| 2010 ||style="text-align:right"| 2011

|-

| Red deer    ||style="text-align:right"| 2,200–2,800     ||style="text-align:right"| 3,300    

|-

| Konik ponies    ||style="text-align:right"| 1,090     ||style="text-align:right"| 1,150    

|-

| Heck cattle    ||style="text-align:right"| 320     ||style="text-align:right"| 350    

|-

| Roe deer    ||style="text-align:right"| 30–40     ||style="text-align:right"| n/a    

|}

thumb|Carcass of deer that had been shot because it was too weak to survive the winter

Management

The reserve is the subject of decades of management reports and protests against the large reported number of grazers dying by starvation or shot to death, while the animals are kept behind a fence and cannot migrate.

During a particularly harsh winter in 2005, many animals in the Oostvaardersplassen died of starvation, leading to public outcry against alleged animal cruelty and leading to the culling strategy. In the winter of 2017–2018, almost 3,300 deer, horses and cattle starved to death dividing the Dutch public and leading to demonstrations and individuals feeding hay to the animals despite police arrests. Because the Oostvaardersplassen is a man-made wilderness experiment, the large herbivores are expected to survive independently without any human intervention such as feeding, breeding, or vaccination.

The Province asked the Van Geel Commission to write a policy which was presented in April and approved on 11 July 2018. This Van Geel report advised to manage the terrain instead of rewilding. The consequence is a reduction of the numbers of remaining animals either by replacing or shooting which led to another outburst of protests and court cases.

Mass mortalities were likely also caused by failure to connect the reserve to the Veluwe nearby due to conflicts with farmers and a lack of political support, abandonment of due to political transition, and failure to introduce large predators.

Further development

In many ways the Oostvaardersplassen is an isolated area; it is in a polder with no previous history and there are currently no wildlife corridors connecting it to other nature reserves. The "Ecological Main Structure" plan proposes connections between nature reserves in the Netherlands, calling for a corridor to be created toward the nearby forest near Zeewolde. The resulting network, called Oostvaardersland, would be part of Natura 2000, the European-wide network of habitats to which Oostvaardersplassen belongs. The creation of Oostvaardersland will allow seasonal small scale migration and take some strain off the big grazers in winter. In the summer, Oostvaardersplassen will offer rich grazing and the sea winds will keep biting insects at bay, in the winter, the Horsterwold will offer protection from cold winds and supply browse. Oostvaardersland will comprise a total area of . Furthermore, there is an option for a connection to the Veluwe forest. Eventually this could allow wild animals to move to and from Germany.

Oostvaardersland was expected to be finished by 2014. However, the project ran into financial and political troubles. In 2012 the creation of , the connecting corridor between Oostvaardersplassen and the Horsterwold, was stopped, and four members of the regional parliament resigned. The government then planned to sell back the property to the previous owners for less money than it originally paid for the property; according to European nature laws it would then have to turn other lands into wilderness areas to compensate for the loss of the OostvaardersWold nature area. In 2018, the Oostvaardersplassen rewilding experiment was terminated due to public backlash from the mass deaths of the herbivores.

As above-mentioned, the plan to connect to the De Hoge Veluwe National Park in Gelderland also failed.

<gallery>

Image:Koniks3.JPG|Konik ponies

Image:GroteGrazers.JPG|A Heck bull amongst a herd of Konik ponies

Image:Heckrund3.JPG|Young Heck cow with calves

File:Edelhert.jpg|A red deer

</gallery>

See also

  • De Nieuwe Wildernis, a 2013 Dutch natural history documentary film
  • Pleistocene Park
  • Wood-pasture hypothesis

References

  • Oostvaardersplassen at the website of Staatsbosbeheer