“Nature in the Netherlands must be better protected.” This is what forest rangers from Natuurmonumenten think. The forest rangers called on the party leaders of the seventeen largest political parties to take action after the elections.
Bart Zwiers is one of the forest rangers who supports the call. He works in the Fifty Acre nature reserve near Midlaren. “If you look closely, you see that the heather here is dead. Year after year, more heathland plants disappear. There is very little left,” Zwiers told NOS.
According to Zwiers, this damage to nature has to do with water extraction, nitrogen and climate change. “I have been doing this for 25 years now and did not expect that I would experience nature on the verge of collapse,” he says.
Zwiers contradicts the rumors that ‘it wouldn’t be too bad with the state of nature’. “Just look at the numbers,” he says. “We’ve lost 76 percent of our insects, that is devastating, incredible. We must realize that we are part of that. Without that nature we have no chance to survive. These insects pollinate our food.”
“An ecosystem cannot continue to live without it being complete,” the Drenthe forest ranger explains. The forest rangers therefore warn politicians about the collapse of nature. If plants and insects are removed from nature one by one, this process will only accelerate.
The forest rangers see nature agencies that are ‘scaled down’ and nature policy that is ‘watered down’, while that policy is intended to maintain healthy nature. “Still thirty thousand hectares to go; it is one to twelve. We have to look ourselves in the eye. That is why we have written to all the party leaders. Necessity breaks law, it is really necessary.”
According to Zwiers, he and his colleagues are dependent on outside factors over which they have no influence. They believe that these problems must be solved first. “It is now a matter of mopping with the tap open,” Zwiers concludes.