Ecologist and professor of Plantecology and Nature Management David Kleijn is worried. There are actually few animals or plants in the region that can cope with such major weather changes.
“Nowadays we have a record every year. Then it is drought, then again with rainfall,” says Kleijn. Last year, for example, the wettest year ever was measured, while since March this year we have been heading for a historic dry spring.
If that drought were a permanent pattern, nature could gradually adjust, Kleijn explains. In that case, certain species will disappear, but there is room for flora and fauna from warmer areas, such as southern Europe. “But that is not the case,” he emphasizes. “One time they are in Ireland and next time it is southern Italy. They don’t survive that.”
‘Ten thousand insects per day’
That unpredictability of the weather makes it complicated for many animals to reproduce. Forest ranger Arjan Postma also notices that. Take the godwit, one of the most numerous meadow birds in the province. He prefers to build on the moment there are plenty of caterpillars. A young godwit needs a thousand small insects every day to survive. But with persistent drought, the caterpillars stay away, and therefore also the eggs. “Then a whole breeding season soon falls into the water.”
The consequences are also clearly visible in The North Holland Duneswhere high and low vegetation alternate. The higher plants flourish in wet years. In dry years it is the lower part that survives, because they can with the low -lying water.
But now first only the highest plants survive in extremely wet weather, which then die as soon as the extreme drought presents itself. Simply because their roots do not reach deep enough to reach the low -lying, scarce water.
‘Nature becomes an incubator child’
And that is just a fraction of the bigger problem, says Kleijn. “Bees, dragonflies, freshwater fish, meadow birds, they all get a huge optater.”
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