Volunteers from the Mammal Association are today busy counting Mollen and Molhopen. That happens in various places in the Netherlands, including in Drenthe. Despite the snow.
“Brilliant timing”, volunteer Aaldrik Pot laughs with a view to the visibility of the Molhopen. “But it is now mating season so it is actually a very good time.”
Pot is forest ranger in daily life and looks at the animals with great fascination. “A mole is so well adapted to life underground. They don’t see very well, but can feel incredibly good.” He points to the tail and the hairs on the nose. “If they walk backwards, for example, they can feel their tail or encounter something.”
But the animals have even more peculiarities. This way they can dive in their corridors and have a special fur. Pot: “Of most animals you can only stroke the hair backwards, but from the mole you can put the hair both in the lace. Those hair are randomly implanted so that he has no resistance in the hallway. That is really very nice . “
The moles have a large territory. Sometimes two to three thousand square meters. “If you have twenty molehills, that is often just a mole,” explains Pot.
Apart from the Wadden Islands, De Mol can be found everywhere in the Netherlands according to the observation cards. To discover how the mole is developing within such a territory, the molehills are counted in several places. “What we find especially interesting is whether they are still so common in forests like before.”
With the acidification in the ground, according to Pot there is a chance that there are fewer moles in the forests nowadays. Because of the changing relationships, there are also fewer worms, the main food of the animals.
Last year 80,000 Molhopen were counted throughout the Netherlands. In gardens there were 12,000.