Since November 1, 2023, part of the road has been closed through the nature reserve for the continuous car traffic.
To find out what the effect of this closure is, Natuurmonumenten took measurements in 2023 and 2024. From April to November, cyclists have counted the dead animals every day that they encountered on the road and on the roadside.
In 2024 the researchers found 30 dead animals. There were three types of reptiles that are considered vulnerable by Ravon (reptiles of amphibians fishing): the smooth snake, the ring snake and the adder.
The ring snake in particular often came under the car: 24 dead specimens were found.
In any case, they are much less dead animals than in the same period a year earlier. Then the road was still accessible to through traffic.
A total of 146 dead animals were found in 2023. That involved, among other things, 74 ring snakes and 11 adders.
When researching dead animals on Fochteloërveenweg, amphibians were left out of the count, because it costs too much money because of the sometimes large numbers of toads that are killed in the migration to the wintering area. There are sometimes hundreds a day.