It is a great year for the Wulp. The endangered bird species has been struggling for years to raise youngsters. But thanks to a lot of help, the population has grown considerably this year.
At the Akkervogels knowledge center in Zuidlaren they are happy when twenty youngsters are raised during a breeding season. “We have a record year,” Henk Jan Ottens shines from the Knowledge Center. “This year we are ticking the forty boy who really flew away. There are still several youngsters on the road and families where there are three youngsters. That’s really great.”
On the edge of Dwingeloo, a father’s welfare is with his three chicks. Or well, chicks. After more than thirty days we can safely call them teenagers. “Very cool to see. We rarely experience that parent -wules see all the boy grow up.” The teenagers are already starting to flutter with their wings and can fly small pieces. When they are 35 days old, the birds are fast. Then they can fly away more easily and cover long distances.
The first two weeks after the chicks come out of their eggs, they are the most vulnerable. Mom and Dad Wulp get a lot of help in Drenthe to raise their offspring. “That is a total management of farmers and volunteers. Looking for volunteers, mowing around it. We put Rasters around the nests. But we are also alert when we have to be mowed that we can find the boy because we Zenderen. And we are also just lucky that we can find the chicks. That doesn’t always work.”
But there are still a lot of young people who don’t make it. There are no fewer than a hundred nests in Drenthe, if you know that sometimes three chicks are born per nest, a total of forty flows is not a large number. “No, that’s right,” says Ottens. “But Wulpen can be thirty years. So 1 young a year is already a lot. Some wulls raise a young every year. Then the population grows.”
The Wulp has a protected status and has been put on the so -called ‘Red List’. That status remains. Because it is getting better and better with the curlew, the bird still needs the help of humans. The Akkervogels Knowledge Center therefore wants to roll out the Drenthe approach over all areas in the Netherlands with Wulpen.