When Wim van Opbergen walks around in the Deurnese Peel, he soon finds himself on his haunches by a puddle of water. Delighted, he takes a handful of peat moss out of the water. Peat moss belongs to the high moor area as it was, not that ubiquitous pipe straw and all those birch trees. They are advancing due to desiccation and nitrogen pollution. Wim has been working for this area for almost 45 years with Werkgroep Behoud de Peel. “I just have that inner urge.” On Wednesday he talks about it in the television program ‘KRAAK asks door’ of Omroep Brabant.
Wim van Opbergen has made protecting nature his profession. This started in the late 1970s when the municipality of Deurne wanted to excavate parts of the Peel. Together with others, they managed to turn it into a protected nature reserve.
Thousands of checkers
Wim: “We then set to work ourselves. We built thousands of dams to retain the water. If you now look at satellite photos, you see those dams and the pools of water that would not have existed without our efforts.”
He’s quite proud of that. But he also sees how difficult it is to restore nature. Especially because the government often does not follow its own rules. He and his working group went to court hundreds of times and was often right. It was through one of those procedures that the government was forced to implement a much stricter nitrogen policy.
Wim can sometimes be gloomy about the future. “I’m afraid we’re all going to continue to ruin the environment,” he says. But when it comes to his own life’s work, de Peel, he keeps his spirits up. “If we succeed in getting the Peel wetter and we manage to reduce nitrogen emissions, even if only by half, then you will see an enormous improvement in nature”.
‘KRAAK asks through’ will be broadcast on Wednesday at a quarter past five and then repeated. The program can also be seen on Brabant+.