The Council of State believes that the Tynaarlo municipal council should carefully investigate whether it is necessary and acceptable to convert an intended nature reserve in De Groeve into agricultural cultivation and pasture land.
This is stated in a final ruling by the highest administrative court, which is in line with a number of residents of De Groeve. With this procedure they wanted to prevent farmers from having a pasture of 7 hectares south of the Hunzeweg may be opened up and plowed again so that it can be used as a potato field again, for example.
During the investigation into the matter, the Council of State encountered an insurmountable technical-legal blockage. Because when the municipal council converted the pasture from a nature destination to an agricultural destination, the plot was still part of the heavily protected National Nature Network (NNN). And then as a province you are in principle not allowed to designate it as agricultural.
Nature or agricultural destination?
Later, the province of Drenthe removed the pasture from the NNN. However, the Council of State does not consider this a reason to leave it agricultural. After all, more things play a role, such as a land exchange that did not go through and the construction of a nature reserve a little further away.
For this reason, the municipal council will have to reconsider the question of whether the meadow should remain natural or be given an agricultural purpose again.
This offers new opportunities to village resident Paul Piëts and supporters. Because they still cannot stomach the fact that the province of Drenthe has removed the pasture from the Drenthe NNN map and thus released it again for regular agriculture. “That is unique! Nowhere in the Netherlands do provinces convert nature back into agricultural land,” Paul Piëts said earlier in The Hague.
‘Never a high natural value’
According to Het Drentse Landschap, the intention was once to develop nature on all lands along the Hunze. But due to a southern diversion from the Hunze to the Zuidlaardermeer, the meadows at De Groeve became isolated.
“We only have limited money for nature development. And we would be better off investing that in plots that are better located and contiguous. These plots will never have a high nature value. That is why it has become agricultural land again,” Melle Buruma of the Landscape said earlier at the Council of State.
In any case, it is the Tynaarlo city council’s turn again.