Boer Arjan Mulder: ‘If you take good care of migratory birds such as the godwit, they will come back every year’

The godwit in the Netherlands is going well dramatically, but there is little to notice in the Krimpenerwaard. You actually hear bad news about the godwit, which was still named National Bird ten years ago. But dairy farmer Arjan Mulder met on his meadows this spring, of the total of 128 nests of meadow birds such as redshank, lapwing, oystercatcher and slobe duck. A record. “And we also have eighteen nests of the black tern,” smiles Mulder. Together with his parents in the village of Vlist, on the river of the same name, he manages a dairy farm with one hundred and fifty cows. Plus: a meadow bird campsite. “That’s what I call it,” says Mulder (27) in the garden of the farm. “If you take good care of migratory birds such as the godwit, they come back every year. And their boy will come back,” he says, “if they had fun.” People sometimes think that ‘camping’ means that they can set up their tent to look at godwits, he says. “But that is not the intention.” Every year the campsite expands and more godwits come on the meadows. “Kicken,” Mulder calls that. “I strive for one hundred and fifty breeding pairs.”

The Netherlands is not doing enough

Mulders satisfaction is all the greater because the godwit is going so badly elsewhere in the Netherlands. Last week, the European Commission sent a ‘reasons of reasoned advice’ to the cabinet, a new step in an ‘infringement procedure’ due to failure protection of the godwit. Nine years ago, Bird Protection Netherlands submitted a complaint, and last year the European Commission wrote a first reminder, which can lead to a case at the European Court of Justice without response from the Netherlands. According to last week’s new reminder, the Netherlands has announced measures last year, “but so far they have not been implemented broad enough to reverse the continuing decrease in the species by adjusting agricultural practices to guarantee breeding success. Moreover, the designation of new sites where the bird is breeding in considerable numbers,” said the committee. Those measures, Taken by outgoing State Secretary Jean Rummenie (Nature, BBB) mainly consist of more subsidies, more protection of godwits in nature reserves, fighting predators and, remarkably, the mechanical degradation of black-tailed eggs.

Fewer godwits every year

Bird Protection The Netherlands finds the second warning from Brussels “a great support in the back,” said policy officer Bernard de Jong. “We have been struggling for nine years. The decisiveness is missing. That will hopefully change now.” The Netherlands has a special responsibility for the godwit, since 80 percent of all breeding pairs in the world breed here. The godwit stays most of the year in West Africa, Spain and Portugal in particular and draws in the Netherlands for about two months in the spring. Unfortunately, many youngsters are not born and raised in the breeding season, because the habitats are too small in Dutch farmland, there is insufficient water, the young are mowed away, and they are eaten in the short grass by other animals. According to Bernard de Jong, the number of godwits has been falling by 4 percent every year since 1990 and there are only 25,000 breeding pairs left – compared to around 120,000 fifty years ago. De Jong: “In the past, godwits and time had enough, with grass that was mowed only mid -July, if the boy is big enough to fly. Now they have to do with small, dewatered habitats, full of ryegrass that is sometimes mowed at the end of April.” All the more reason to not only set extra protection for the godwit in existing nature areas (“there is only 10 percent”) but to expand the number of habitats outside the nature reserves.

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The secret? The cows

There are people who think that food production and godwit do not go together. Arjan Mulder explicitly does not agree with that. What is his secret? The young farmer, also biological cattle specialist at an animal feed company, walks to the meadows, where more than a hundred cows are peeing and pooping. “The cows are the secret,” laughs Mulder, pointing to some fresh cow pies. “Look how many insects are on that.” All food for grutto chicks. The sixty hectares of meadows, an almost endless area behind the farm, are by no means a bare plain, but somewhat bumpy and here and there soggy, through ditch water that has been brought into the grass via a pump and irrigation bipes. The Mulders only mow grass late in the season. “If we mow everything flat, there is no longer any coverage for the godwits, they stand out and are eaten immediately. By crows. By storks. The few times I mow, I immediately have a few storks behind the tractor, because there is always something to get for them in the cut grass.” There are herbs and flowers on the edges of the grass, good for insects and therefore also for the meadow birds. Electronic fences are placed here and there. Against predators. “There are many cats here. They eat chicks.” Just like martens, ermine, bunzingen. And the more nests with meadow birds, the better they can protect themselves against these predators. Mulder: “A godwit doesn’t make it against a crow. But if they all fly up at the same time, they are strong together.”

I have not finished much this spring. Because yes, I had to get up at five o’clock the next morning to look for nests

Appreciation and congratulations

Perhaps even more decisive for the success of Gruttoboer Mulder, this is: that he searches for nests for an hour or two every day in the spring, and protects it. Mulder: “I put a electric fence around it. So that the cows do not graze there. This way the grass stays there for a long time and the boy can walk sheltered.” Last month, together with his parents, Mulder won the ‘Golden Grutto’ of Bird Protection, an exchanging trophy and 5,000 euros for the farmer who is ‘above average for the meadow birds’. Mulder: “That is a nice appreciation. And nice that citizens from the area congratulate us with that and say they like it so much. Those are people who watch TV on the couch in the evening while I am still protecting nests. And in the morning. I was very little to get up at five o’clock this spring.”

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You will earn more without godwits

Mulder understands that not all farmers get to work with meadow birds equally. “You have to have a passion for birds. Because it doesn’t produce anything. In fact, you can earn more without birds.” That has to do with the extra hours that you as a meadow bird manager make, but especially with mowing grass later. Anyone who, as a farmer, postpons the mowing of grass to protect the godwits, receive 1,400 euros per hectare from the government. But Arjan Mulder would earn much more without the meadow birds. So the reimbursement must be increased. Mulder: “A meadow bird must be able to compete with a dairy cow.” And if higher reimbursements are considered unauthorized state aid? He looks over the country. “Preferably,” he says, “I would like to sell ‘godwit cheese’ or something with other farmers in the area, bird -friendly produced dairy. That you remove the reimbursements from the market itself. But yes, the practice shows that this is not feasible.”

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