Dozens of frogs and rare salamanders have drowned in the dunes of IJmuiden in recent days. NH colleague and naturalist Stephan Roest found the dead animals when walking through the area. The animals’ deaths appear to be related to ‘water pump gate.’ The pump was used last week to protect stored beach houses against the extremely high water. The amphibians were probably woken from hibernation by the water and then drowned.
Rust found the dead animals right next to the water hoses of the now infamous water pump. Dozens of frogs and salamanders lay lifeless on and next to the path. He speaks of a ‘small disaster.’
Water pump gate
This seems to have begun a new chapter in the book that has come to be called the IJmuidense ‘water pump gate’. A project that started during last week’s high tide. To save the beach houses from destruction, the rapidly rising water had to be pumped away. That worked, but the action did have negative consequences.
The Dresmé-Van der Valk family lives less than a kilometer away from the stored beach houses and claims that the pumped out water is now their cellars walks in. “We spend hours every day emptying our basement,” they told NH earlier this week.
Not much later it turned out that the water pump hoses had been damaged three times sabotaged. The Dresmé-Van der Valk family washes their hands of innocence. They say they know nothing and point to young people from the neighborhood who allegedly acted out of boredom.
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Possibly hundreds of dead amphibians
So a lot of consequences from a project that initially seemed relatively simple. Stephan Roest notes that the consequences of the water are also serious for the animals present in the area: “Apparently the frogs and salamanders were awakened from their hibernation by the pumped out water and drowned. You could call it a small tragedy. A disaster, in fact. .”
Roest says he observed several dozen dead amphibians during his walk. “Given the vastness of this area, you can therefore safely assume that hundreds of frogs and salamanders have died. It is extra sad because these are protected animal species on the Red List.”
Fleeing from drought
He says it is extra painful that the animals appear to have died from drowning. “It has been too dry in the dunes for years, so they could not lay their eggs. That is why they sought out this, slightly wetter, area. And now this happens!”
However, Roest does not want to point out a guilty party. “No one would have foreseen this. Perhaps another solution could have been chosen to pump away the excess water, but I do not have that solution available.”
No one at the municipality of Velsen and NH Infra, the company that handles the pumping, was available for comment on Thursday evening.