Outdoorsman Jorien Bakker from Groningen is fighting for the Wadden Sea: ‘We are facing a crucial year. It can go both ways’

“Haha, fantastic,” screams Jorien Bakker when she steps off the boat on Ameland and wind force 8 almost blows her off the jetty. The 45-year-old resident of the city of Groningen is a real outdoors person. “It’s blue again,” she says about the sun breaking through and the clear sky. But if it had been bleak, cloudy and wet – like earlier in the day – it wouldn’t have mattered to her. “If you go onto the Wadden Sea, the weather might be nicer. Many people only see gray, but if you look closely, you will see a range of colors.”

Bakker visits a Wadden island on average twice a month. She is an ambassador for Natuurmonumenten for the Wadden Sea, but also for Friesland and Groningen. So it’s a third of her job. “I often spend time in Harlingen and Lauwersoog, but also in The Hague and Amersfoort, where our head office is located. But I come to Leeuwarden most often, which is funny as a Wadden ambassador.”

Bakker often sits at the table with administrators, such as deputies from the provinces of Fryslân and Groningen. The House for the Wadden is located in Leeuwarden, where the Wadden Fund, the Wadden Academy and the Wadden management authority are housed. This morning she had a meeting about it new goose policy in the provincial government building in Leeuwarden as a member of the Provincial Commission for Rural Areas. But on behalf of Natuurmonumenten, she also occupies one of the seven seats in the Wadden Area Environmental Council (the secretariat is also in the House for the Wadden), which also consists of a representative of Bird Protection, the ports, fisheries, agriculture, recreation and the science. Together with a ‘second ring’ of government representatives, they advise three ministries on the Wadden area.

“I spend a lot of time indoors, actually too much,” she says, laughing. That’s why she regularly suggests holding meetings outside. Or walking, like part of this interview. “Every person needs the outside, literally. You have no walls around your thoughts. It has been scientifically proven. Nature, greenery, even just the view of a tree, has a positive effect on your mental state and your health.”

She deliberately does not have a car and travels by public transport or bicycle. That seems difficult given the “wandering life” she leads with her position. “No, by bus you can reach the ferry dam to Schiermonnikoog within 50 minutes. Ok, I have to be in the most impossible places. At offices in Olterterp, in Easterein or in Smeerling at Liefstinghsbroek in East Groningen, but there is almost always someone you can ride with.”

Wilderness feeling

During her childhood in the Achterhoek in Groenlo, she was always outside, playing in huts. Bakker only really discovered the Wadden when she had settled in Groningen, where she had stayed after a communications course. “You can almost experience a wilderness feeling here, I like that. The weather, the elements, the changing tide, and then that open horizon… In September we walked in small groups from Wierum towards Engelsmanplaat, you are very insignificant in the middle of all that vastness. Shrimp shoot between your feet and you see seal heads, I really enjoy that,” she says, while on Ameland she focuses her binoculars on large groups of oystercatchers and golden plovers at the high-water refuge near the Nes ferry dam. A young seal appears behind the groups of migratory birds. “They are so playful. Beautiful.”

Bakker has expanded his knowledge of the Wadden area enormously over the past twenty years. “But what I have only recently learned is that there were large groups of bottlenose dolphins here a century ago. Dolphins. Unbelievable, there were so many fish, you can imagine. Back then, if you pulled a net through the Wadden Sea, it was chock full of fish. The Wadden Sea was an ecosystem rich in biodiversity, with a multitude of species of fish, lugworms, cockles and seagrass and is one of the most important stopping places and foraging areas in the world for birds migrating from south to north,” says Bakker, who points out that our Wadden Sea (which reaches to Denmark) is one of the seven intertidal seas in the world. ,,The biggest. As collaborating nature organizations, we want to return to the Wadden Sea where there is a lot of life.”

‘Nature has deteriorated dramatically’

It has been clear for a long time that despite the recovery of the seal populations, the ecosystem in the Wadden Sea is not doing well. There have been a series of scientific reconfirmations of this in recent months. The Wadden Academy showed in one thorough legal study indicates that international treaties are hardly observed an evaluation commissioned by Rijkswaterstaat to designate the Wadden Sea as a Natura 2000 area, it turned out that many conservation goals for species and habitats are not being achieved and in September expressed UNESCO is concerned about all activities in the Wadden Sea, which conflict with its world heritage status. “Is it bad to lose that status? Then you can feel ashamed. The Wadden Sea is the only natural world heritage that the Netherlands has.”

As a large, important nature reserve, the Wadden Sea is well protected, says Bakker. “Nevertheless, nature has deteriorated dramatically. Then I look at the government, which does not comply with treaties,” says Bakker. And then there is what she considers a strange difference between Natura 2000 areas on land and at sea. “You are not allowed to hunt on land, but you can hunt on the Wadden Sea. Shrimp fishing is now becoming tolerated What will the ministry do with this? Of course, there remains room for fishing, but the intensity affects nature. Maybe we should close off more parts of the Wadden Sea. That is now 11 percent, if it were up to ‘Europe’ it should be 30 percent.”

Bakker notes that there are approximately 80,000 activities on the Wadden Sea every year, as researcher Martin Baptist of the Netherlands Center for Coastal Research had discovered in the spring of 2022. “There are so many pressure factors,” she sums up. “The existing gas and salt extraction, bottom-disturbing shrimp fishing, dredging work, the construction of cables for wind farms, sea level rises with the necessary dike reinforcements, low-flying exercises by Defense, mussel farming, increasing recreational pressure …That’s not even all. Name anything else? No, that makes me sad.”

In a café-restaurant in Nes, Bakker stacks a tower of coffee cups and salt and pepper shakers on a saucer and slides two cookies onto another saucer. “The balance between economy and ecology is lost. Think of this as a scale. Here, this saucer is way too full. Not everything can be removed. People live and work in the Wadden area, but I would really like it if we could make this dish a little emptier.”

‘Get well soon nature’ can already provoke aggression

Piles of scientific studies show that the balance is tipping negatively for ecology. Yet the experience is often different. Like other nature organizations, Natuurmonumenten is encountering increasingly grim resistance, as Bakker also experiences, who prefers not to give the subject too much attention. “You are not allowed to do anything, it all affects nature,” is the gist. Ultimately that is not the case, nature is doing badly.”

Nature is much more controversial today than when Bakker was still doing communications for Staatsbosbeheer in the Northern Netherlands about five years ago. An innocent public campaign with a yellow button with a red butterfly and the text: ‘get well soon nature’ sometimes arouses aggression, especially on social media. To such an extent that not everyone wears the button as pontifically as Bakker. “All things considered, it is only a small group that rages on social media. And there are also people who feel that nature gets in their way and limits them. But we get a lot of support. A survey has shown that 86 percent of Dutch people think it is important that nature is protected. From left to right, there is no difference.”

This year and next year will be crucial, says Bakker and almost all Wadden administrators. Decisions need to be made about the route for the cables to the wind farms in the North Sea, about a new permit for shrimp fishing, about the course of the waterway to Ameland, about new gas extraction from Ternaard, about the recommendations for better protection of the Wadden Sea as a Natura 2000 area and one of these must be days to respond to UNESCO’s criticism.

‘Ferwert? You can’t say that with dry eyes.”

Ferwert can be seen westwards from the ferry heading to Holwert. The channel to Ameland must be dredged almost non-stop to keep it navigable. This must change in the near future. There are still two options left: either optimize the ferry port in Holwert or move the port to Ferwert, where outgoing Minister Mark Harbers of Infrastructure and Water Management a preference has for. Bakker shakes her head. “The salt marsh is very wide there, so you have to build a road and a dike straight through vulnerable nature. With complete infrastructure, parking spaces, that can never be permitted in a Natura 2000 area?! You cannot say with dry eyes that Ferwert is a good solution.”

Natuurmonumenten is moving in a preference to maintain Holwert as a departure port to Ameland together with It Fryske Gea, Vogelbescherming Nederland and the Wadden Association. “Liveability and nature do not have to be a stark contrast. You can also look at other solutions. You can also adjust your transport concept, you don’t have to transport everything on the island with cars and trucks. Then you can sail with smaller, lighter ships, Holwert can be preserved and you don’t have to dredge as much. Look at the German Wadden Islands, it is also possible there. And Schiermon-Nikoog also has no car traffic.”

“It can go both ways,” Bakker notes. She is confident that the coin will fall on the good side for nature. This year, the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality must also draw up the long-awaited policy framework ‘Nature Wadden Sea’, for which the nature clubs have been lobbying for years. “That is a policy framework that does do something about the pressure factors. The basic principle is: nature comes first. That is in black and white, it bodes well.”