Despite fatal illness, Lars saves piece of special nature: ‘Very special’

The sun has just risen, the grass is still wet. With good walking shoes, Lars van Peij walks through the nature reserve just outside the village of Oeffelt. “Here we are walking in a new piece of Maasheggen landscape. Ten years ago there was only corn here. The twelve hectares are now as they were in 1950. All hedges are being restored. Then you can see a bit of what the old landscape looked like.”

The Maasheggen is the oldest cultural landscape in the Netherlands and has been on the UNESCO list of so-called biosphere areas since 2018. These are areas with a special status where people and nature come together. “Almost all of the Netherlands used to be like this, now this is the last hedge network we have left. This landscape is 2,000 years old. This is very special.”

For centuries, farmers fenced off their meadows with woven hedges. These hedges turned out to be not only useful as a barrier, but also good for plants, birds and insects. “They were planted to keep livestock in, to keep out predators and even to keep the Romans out. Those armies found when they got here that they were difficult to get through.”

After 1950, many hedges were removed, partly due to the introduction of barbed wire. Lars’ passion is to get those hedges back. It started when the Limburger-born went bird-spotting in the nature reserve. “There are not many left in the forests of the Netherlands, but if you walk around here, you will soon see a lot of them. That has to do with those hedges.”

After studying forest and nature management in Wageningen, he quickly returned to his beloved Maasheggen. “I became a project leader here about ten years ago. At one point I was diagnosed with hereditary Huntington’s disease. That is a combination of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and MS. My mother and grandfather also had it.”

“And you can’t do anything about it. I don’t know how old I will be,” he adds. He noticed that the work he was doing was becoming increasingly difficult. “I have now completely rejected my work and stopped working. I could no longer cope with the hustle and deadlines. I could no longer do all the normal things that require working.”

A lot of time was left to enjoy his two-year-old son and wife. Although his passion for the Maasheggen remained. “So I looked for what I could do. I am one crowdfunding started and to raise money for that I started walking the Kennedy March. All this to make the Maasheggen beautiful again.”

He has now raised more than 22,000 euros and planted kilometers of hedges with hundreds of volunteers. In the last planting season alone (November 2024 to February 2025), he has already reduced almost three kilometers. Many people call him the King of the Maasheggen. “That’s really bad,” he responds modestly. “I just want to inspire people to see the power of nature.”