What can a brand new patch of nature tell us about Europe's ancient history?

In this episode, we touch down in the Netherlands, where an unconventional experiment (the Oostvaardersplassen) has shaken up both the field of ecology and Dutch society. What started as a bird watcher’s obsession with thousands of trekking geese, led to a criticism of one of the central tenets in ecology: ecosystem succession.

Enter a counter-theory that would return the rarest of birds, butterflies, and a once-extinct mega mammal to one of the most densely populated countries on earth.

For photos, transcripts, citations, and musical credits, head to www.futureecologies.net/listen/fe-4-3-a-tiny-wilderness

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You are listening to Season 4 of Future

Ecologies.

Are we all recording locally?

Let's see. I got signal. Yes. Okay.

Okay. I'm rolling.

Okay. I have – I have absolutely no idea of what

we're going to talk about. Really. This is a first for me.

But you know why we're up so early in the

morning?

What time is it there for you, Toon?

It's five past three in the afternoon.

Oh, that's nice.

Yeah, it's just the middle of the day.

I guess that should make the point clear that

we are up earlier than we'd like to be to record this podcast,

because we're getting a little bit outside of our own backyard

today. We're going to Europe.

Oh right! Um, we should introduce ourselves. My name is

Mendel.

And I'm Adam.

Nice.

You too.

Oh, sorry. My name is Toon. I'm from the Netherlands.

That's a little European country people sometimes confused with

Denmark. But we're the one that has Amsterdam.

Right. Tell us a little bit about the story

you've got for us today.

Yeah. Today, I'd like to invite you to the bottom of

the sea, because there are some interesting creatures living

there, as you may know. More specifically, the animals that

graze there.

Like sea urchins?

I'll give you a little hint.

[Sound of burling Red Deer]

[Laughs]

Wait, that does not sound like any animal I know

from the bottom of the ocean.

That sounds like a deer!

Yeah, the bottom of the sea I'm talking about is a

polder. Do you know what that is? A polder?

A boulder... like a big rock?

No. So a polder is a tract of land that used to be

underwater. So that could be a sea or a lake or a marsh. And

then at some point, humans decide that they're going to

drain it. They're going to pump out all the water. Usually,

windmills were used to pump out the water beyond the dikes,

draining the water out of the area. And basically creating

land where there used to be sea.

Famously, you come from a country that is

underwater. I understand.

Yeah, Atlantis.

Right. Okay, so a polder is a is an area of land

that has essentially been reclaimed from the ocean. Would

you use a word like that:

"reclaimed"?

Claimed for the first time, maybe...

Exactly. That's the interesting part. People always

say "reclaimed". But maybe claim is a good word. I don't think we

were particularly entitled to the bottom of the sea, but

people wanted to farm.

So once you have poldered this land, you have land where there

used to be water, you can do all kinds of stuff with it. So the

soil becomes super fertile. Often it's used for agriculture.

But the Dutch were like "We have 11 provinces... that's nice. But

we want 12"!

[Laughs] Of course

So they decided to create another province, which

they called Flevoland, and it was created between 1918 and

1986, which is really young.

So they just up and decided that they wanted to

make their country larger. And instead of doing it, I guess the

normal way, you just basically make it out of the ocean.

Preferable to invasion.

Yes, they invaded the water instead. But there's a

"God created the world, but the Dutch created the

Netherlands". It's a bit much, but you get the sense of pride

that is felt.

And in the polder of Flevoland, this new province, there is the

great wilderness that we call the Oostvaardersplassen

Um.. one more time?

The Oostvaardersplassen

The Oostvaardersplassen...

Pretty good! Mendel?

Oh, for me. Oh, jeez. Oost... vaar... ders...

plassen.

Oostvaardersplassen. But if that's too Dutch for you,

you can just call it OVP

OVP.

So you have the Oostvaardersplassen, and the

train from the city of Almere to Lelystad (which is the capital

of Flevoland) will take you right past.

I asked Koen Arts, a nature writer and researcher at

Wageningen University to describe the Oostvaardersplassen

for us.

For someone who has never seen the Oostvaardersplassen, what is

it?

Yeah, that's that's a funny one because I think for a

lot of foreigners, it's... it's unlike anything they've seen.

So, imagine a small piece of land: about 5500 hectares. So

when you talk about nature conservation on on the global

level, usually, nature reserves, national parks are much much

bigger.

On multiple sides, you have dikes of a few meters high. And

The Oostvaardersplassen is a reserve unlike other natural

then — also which is just so striking — a busy train line

going past it, roads etc, etc around it. And then you have

this kind of semi-wildness that unfolds, in between this very

densely populated area. And of course, in a very densely

populated country, the Netherlands: 70 million people

on about 40,000 square kilometers.

areas in the Netherlands. It's rife with bird life, and sports

a wild cast of characters, including lots of big mammals —

which we'll meet later. Reminiscent of the Serengeti,

but smaller. At least that's what the Dutch tell themselves.

That's funny. I know that the Netherlands is

pretty famous for like miniature... all sorts of

things, right?

Exactly. The tiny Serengeti.

It's kind of quaint, how Canada with all this

wide open space, we have towns that are super proud of their

novelty largest thing in the world. And in the Netherlands,

we have you know, this compact little country where everything

gets miniaturized.

We have tiny everything. We have a tiny theme

park. The theme is tiny. And the natural areas are pretty tiny as

well. This is big for Dutch standards.

So this polder is the bottom of the ocean

transformed into the Serengeti, of a sort.

Yeah. And on its way to becoming the savanna it is

today, this little polder was transformed more than once.

Can I ask a question really quick? This

might be a dumb question. But why would you go to all the

trouble of claiming agricultural land from the ocean? And then

just decide to turn it into like a tiny wilderness?

That's a good question.

Sounds like a lot of work.

Well, it didn't start with that intention. If anything

this nature reserve started off as an accident. When they first

started to poldering process, the land was originally planned

to be an industrial site. But it would turn out at the western

edge was particularly difficult to lay dry.

What you're saying, just from my

understanding, is that it never was particularly good for

agricultural land because it was too wet — didn't do a good

enough job claiming it from the ocean. And you can't dig ditches

because you're already below sea level.

Exactly. So the only way to lay it dry is to pump. So

all kinds of efforts were made to speed up this process.

Airplanes were used to sow reed, which act like little biological

pumps pulling the water up and evaporating it — drying up the

soil it grows on.

But planting all those reeds had a side effects. In the late 70s.

an ecologist by the name of Frans Vera noticed that the

reeds were full of geese. Thousands of greylag geese,

pausing on their treks from Siberia had taken to feasting on

the stuff. And that's when Frans noticed something that was

supposed to be impossible.

And so began an experiment which fundamentally challenged the

field of ecology and continues to influence the way we perceive

and manage nature.

I might be awake by the time that the theme is

over.

Broadcasting from the Low Countries of

Europe, this is Future Ecologies — exploring the shape of our

world through ecology, design and sound.

My name is Frans Vera. I'm a biologist. But in my

heart, I'm a nature conservationist.

This is Frans Vera, the ecologist at the very

beginning of this grand experiment. Fransalways enjoyed

birdwatching. So when the word got around about this new

hotspot for greylag geese and other avian sightings, he and

the entire Dutch birding community were ecstatic. Many of

them would drive out to the dikes alongside the

Oostvaardersplassen. They wanted to enjoy the explosion of rare

bird life while it lasted. In a couple of years, they thought,

the reed would grow over the open water, and many birds would

go elsewhere.

Even after two years, three years, the whole

was covered already with reed from three meters high! So

nobody had any idea of how to preserve it. And that was the

reason that among nature conservationists, an area like

the Oostvaardersplassen was called a "throwaway biotope". So

it would be interesting for about, let's say, a decade, and

then it was finished.

So I understand from that quote, they planted

reed to try to dry out the wetland. Instead, it made great

habitat for geese. And they thought that that was only going

to last for so long because the reed would initiate a kind of

process of succession that would eventually get rid of the

wetland like they had intended.

Yeah, exactly. During his studies, Frans was taught

about the process where different kinds of vegetation

would follow each other in a linear fashion. As the reed was

taking over in the Oostvaardersplassen, the soil

would dry out and give way to other kinds of vegetation.

Eventually, the marshy circumstances so cherished by

many birds and birders will disappear. This theory is called

succession theory.

And the dominant theory at that time, in nature

conservation, but in ecology as a whole, was the so-called

succession theory. It was formulated in 1919 by the

American, Clements. And the theory is that every time when

you have a development, which started at bare soil like the

polder, then you'll get a colonization of first small

plants, then large plants and shrubs. And if the hydrology and

climate is that trees can grow, the end is the climax forest. So

that's, for instance, the idea that the whole of Europe but

also the whole of Northern America, would have been

originally covered with a closed canopy forest.

So the theory goes, leave a bare patch of land

alone. And after a succession of saplings and seedlings, shrubs

and trees, a forest with a closed canopy will grow out of

it. As the landscape changes, animals adjust to their new

circumstances, and go wherever there's food or shelter.

I love that we're discussing succession theory

here on our fourth season of Future Ecologies, now. It's a

pretty fundamental concept in ecology that I think also for

many people, is still very important, although obviously,

it's become more complicated over time. But I've never I've

never thought of succession with respect to like, what happens

when you resurrect land from the ocean, right? Like that's a kind

of bare soil circumstance that is unusual for most of us.

It's the ultimate bare patch of land!

Absolutely, yeah, square one.

But seeing the multitudes of geese at the

Oostvaardersplassen, Frans noticed something.

They opened up the reedbeds, and they did something

of which everybody had thought it would be impossible: they

were even able to change reedbed back into open water! And it

struck me as an ecologist, because suddenly, I see that

grazing animals steer the succession. Instead, what I

that animals always follow the

succession. And because they ought to follow the succession,

you end up in a climax situation, which is, in the

temperate hemisphere, a closed canopy forest.

The geese that had haphazardly arrived at this new

patch of land were creating an ecosystem for themselves and for

all kinds of other animals. At this place that was designated

to become an industrial site, they were punching holes in the

manmade reedbed — slowing down, and even reversing the process

of succession everyone suspected.

So you had the combination of shallow water and

reed, which was a bird paradise for marsh birds: Harriers,

geese, ducks, just name it. A lot of bird species, which were

at that time very rare in the Netherlands, became very common

in that area.

So suddenly, there was a huge interest in keeping these

marshy wetlands for all the new bird live in the area. But

ironically, the marsh was threatened by the reeds that

brought the geese in the first place. Mowing the reed manually

would have been incredibly difficult and expensive. That's

why people called the Oostvaardersplassen a throwaway

biotope — it was impossible to sustain. But what actually

happened is that the geese were taking care of the maintenance

of the area.

And here, the geese did it. And they proved to

create the habitat for all kinds of other bird species.

Instead of seeing the Oostvaardersplassen as a

throwaway biotope, Frans and other biologists started to see

it as something special in its own right. This explosion in

biodiversity led to birdwatchers successfully petitioning for the

Oostvaardersplassen to be protected as a new ecological

reserve.

We are always complaining and being sad about

everything that is becoming lost.

But instead of wallowing in despair, Frans was

inspired by his colleague Ernst Poorter.

He said "We have now a new polder. And you see, we

can have new things, which are probably as valuable, as nice as

beautiful as what we've lost".

[Train station announcement]

I think it's time for me to show you what this is all

about. Let's take the train from Brussels in Belgium — where I

live — to Lelystad in the Netherlands — the country where

I'm from.

As we wait for the train to arrive in Lelystad, I'll get

Frans to help us compare the two theories at play.

If it's possible for a gaggle of geese to influence the

succession of an ecosystem, Frans reasoned that large

herbivores would be exceptional at it. We already recognize this

intuitively with cultivated animals. Pastures don't turn

into forests, and much of Scotland lacks trees because of

its long history of sheep herding. But somehow, in the

halls of academia, wild grazers had been set apart.

If a domestic cow can create and preserve

grassland, why not a wild cow, or a wild horse? "Nooooo," all

the scientists says.

"Why not?"

"No, we had wild cows all over Europe, we had wild horses, we

had European bison, we had moose, we had red deer..."

But despite acknowledging the historical

presence of all these different grazers, ecology textbooks said

that, across all of Europe, humans were the only force

keeping the climax forest at bay.

That's the succession theory.

To which Frans said,

"That's a nice theory. I have another theory.

Shall we test which theory is the good one?"

Said like a true scientist.

And as it happened, France recognized that the

thousands of geese that visited the Oostvaardersplassen needed

both open water — to graze the reeds — and open grasslands — to

rest during their molting period.

So I said, you'll have to add an area of

grasslands to the marshy area, because those two parts are

complimentary for the functioning of the ecosystem as

a whole. Because if we don't get it, the whole system will

collapse.

Artificially maintaining this marshy

ecosystem would be an impossible task. But these hungry geese

were offering to do it for free. So land managers needed a way to

convince them to keep returning to the Oostvaardersplassen. That

is, they needed to provide grasslands.

My theory is if a cow can create grass, and then

wild living oxen can do the same. So if you have wild oxen,

you will have open grassland, which is very well for the

geese.

So Frans proposed an unusual way of creating

grassland for the migratory geese of the

Could wild herbivores be used to create new

habitats for other species in an existing nature reserve? This

was the trial by fire — the start of the experiments that

will put the Oostvaardersplassen on the map.

And I got permission then from the ministry and also

from a National Forestry Service to buy wild oxen and wild

horses. So we had two breeds —

These two breeds are called Heck cattle and Konik

horses,

Which were not common known as dairy cattle or

as riding horses. So then they were brought into the area and

it worked. It worked!

A large area of grassland developed. So, what the animals

did is they created their own biotope.

Soundscape[Train intercom:

Lelystad station]

The classical theory: animals follow the

succession. While my theory was animals drive the succession.

Not all the animals, but the large herbivores. And they are

essential in the functioning of ecosystems, and we just shut

them out of the system.

Frans realize that if large herbivores can steer the

succession, what we imagined as natural — a dense, tree-laden

forest — may have been the result of our removing the large

grazers. Their absence allowed succession to proceed in a way

that we now assume is inevitable. Meaning that the

European forests of history may have looked fundamentally

different than those that we know today.

Here, Frans points to clues in the etymology of the modern word

"forest", in a lecture from 2017.

The word "foras" — Latin "foras": outside, without

— as the origin of the word forestis, which we find in

charters. We have charters going back to the sixth and seventh

century, which were talking about a forestis, the origin of

the word forest. And it had to do with Roman law. Roman law

says what is outside the cultivated, and doesn't belong

to anybody, belongs to the Emperor.

In other words, the word forest doesn't refer to a

place with many trees. It refers to a place that is uncultivated

by people. And it wasn't the only word for a place without

people

And the wilderness and wild animals, they lived in

what was deserted. That means uninhabited by people, and it

was called the Desertum Regis — the Royal Desertum.

What at one point was called "the Royal Desert" was

Hallo hallo, goedemiddag [conversation continues in Dutch].

also called the forest, both words referring to the same wild

places. Over time, their meanings diverged. Until

eventually, deserts were known to be hot and full of sand, and

forests were places where trees blotted out sky. But Frans

contended that so long as large herbivores roamed the forestis,

their hooves and their teeth would have kept the wooded lands

bright, open, and heterogenous and the Oostvaardersplassen will

be the perfect case in points.

This is ecologist Perry Cornelissen, who met me for a

tour of the Oostvaardersplassen. After a coffee, we ventured into

the natural reserve in a 4x4 from the Dutch Forestry Service.

We are now in front of the fence, the gate,

where the area starts where the large herbivores graze and where

people cannot go into. Alright, I will open the gate.

This won't be the last time I have to cross a formal

boundary to get into "the wild" for this episode. As we were

driving into the Oostvaardersplassen, I noticed

how many birds of prey were on the hunt. Normally, if you're

lucky, while driving through the countryside, you might spot just

one. But here, every couple of hundred meters, watchful eyes in

the sky were scouring the ground for small rodents.

So now we are in the area where the large

herbivores are. We have three different species: cattle,

horses and red deer. And they were introduced in 1983. And we

started with a population of 18 Heck cattle and 20 horses, Konik

horses. And in 1992 also red deer were introduced and there

were 40 of them.

These populations weren't managed directly. They

were kept in check by the food supply, especially in winter.

Nonetheless, after 20 years, the number of these large grazers

went from dozens to over 5000.

So now we're entering a large group of Heck

cattle. What you also can see is that the great white egret is

between the large herbivores because when the large

herbivores graze, they disturb the fauna on the surface, so

these great white egrets are waiting for maybe amphibians or

voles to jump out of their holes and then they grab them.

So they're hunting?

Yes.

Amidst of the Heck cattle.

Yes.

We can see how many would you say? About 100 cows?

Oh, this is a group of about, I think 60 or

70.

And then about three, no, four, five, white great

egrets are standing there.

There are more, some of them you can't

see, because the vegetation is too high. But you can see some

white spots everywhere. I think maybe 30 or 40 great white

egrets in the in the vegetation we can't see.

Before the Oostvaardersplassen became a

natural reserve, the great white egret was practically

non-existent in the Netherlands. And here we are, driving around

the former bottom of the sea, looking at dozens of them.

Right now, we are looking at a big bull and he's, what is he

doing?

These bulls, they live in small bull groups

in the area and we have about six of these bull groups. And in

their territory, they have the sandpits they make. And right

now one of these bulls is in his in sandpit and showing how

strong he is by scraping soil with his hooves and throwing it

in the air. And sometimes, they go with their horns into the

sandpit and scraping with their horns in the soil. And just to

show, look, I'm here the boss, I'm the biggest and strongest,

don't mess with me.

This was the first time I'd ever seen cows in the

wild. Sure, they were put there by people for a specific

purpose, but they didn't wear ear tags, pregnant cows weren't

being milked by humans, and bulls apparently liked to dig

sandpits. These weren't the farm cows I was used to. After we

visited the Heck cattle, we took a left which led us to the other

side of the train tracks, which go through the

Oostvaardersplassen. Originally, the train line was planned to

make its way straight through the natural reserve. But a

compromise was reached after protests from the climate

movement, sparked by a report written by Frans Vera.

Incidentally, the Dutch political mode that relies so

heavily on compromising is affectionately called "the

polder model". It was decided that the train line would take a

slight detour, dubbed "the bathtub route", because of its

shape, to avoid the heart of the natural reserve. The other side

of the tracks, Perry told me, was a piece of the reserve where

grazers hadn't been allowed for decades. Effectively, it served

as a control plot for Frans' theories about large herbivores.

The landscape we entered was the opposite of the wide open plains

we drove through moments earlier. Instead, it was a mini

jungle named the Kotterbos.

Everything is tiny, as you said, in the

Netherlands, you have a mini jungle. What does a mini jungle

look like?

So now we're driving into an area, much more

vegetation, there's shrubs, there's trees of different

kinds, we are driving along a narrow path in the middle of it

all. And this is the Kotterbos, a really big difference from

what we were just seeing. All of a sudden, we are in between

trees and shrubs, and we can't see all that far. So compared to

what we were just seeing, the open plains, this landscape is

the complete opposite. You wouldn't be able to walk through

there's nettles, there's reed, it probably wet too. So

you'll you'll get wet feet. I feel like, yeah, like you'd need

a machete to to make your way through.

In this landscape, you don't know what

will happen within ten meters [adds something in Dutch].

Here, perry adds in Dutch that it was always

exciting to go into the Kotterbos, but it was also a

relief to make it out in one piece.

It is a jungle. Oh my god.

The dense and chaotic Kotterbos and the grassy plains

of the Oostvaardersplassen are two alternate realities of the

same place. Their stark differences show just how much

impact large grazers can have on a landscape.

When we come back, the views from the train

prompt this experiment to take a turn.

Welcome back, my name is Mendel. This is Adam.

Hey, still waking up.

This is Toon.

Hey.

And you are listening to Future Ecologies,

where Toon is taking us on a tour of the Oostvaardersplassen.

The site of an experiment that uprooted the science of

ecosystem succession.

And the person behind that experiment is Dutch

ecologist Frans Vera. He told me that the geese hadn't been the

only indicators of a different natural history in Europe. Oak

trees also have a story to tell.

And a forester will say an oak needs to be, as a

seedling, with its head in full daylight

For an oak to grow into an adult tree, it needs

space and light. Pollen records show that oaks have been around

in Europe since around 10,000 BCE. But there's one problem

oaks are not able to grow up in a closed canopy forest.

It's too dark. They do much better in an open landscape, or

something Frans called a "wood pasture", which consists of a

mosaic of grasslands, shrubs and trees.

The moment you remove the large herbivores from

wood pastures, it becomes a closed canopy forest. So there

are a lot of former wood pastures in Europe, which were

declared as nature reserves, or as a national park. And as a

consequence, all the large herbivores were kicked out

because they damage the nature.

And then what happened?

All the oaks disappeared. No regeneration of

oak. They need light! So they all became forests dominated,

totally dominated, by shade tolerant species.

Those open wood pastures are loved by many

famous 19th century painters. Their paintings of these

park-like landscapes remain as a record of a kind of nature that

is hard to recognize today. Majestic oak trees amidst a

patchwork of grasses, shrubs, rocks and copses of trees. They

don't look like the forests I know at all. More than anything,

these artists wanted to protect the places that they found so

beautiful. If only they could keep painting them forever.

However, the tragedy is: they didn't know what were

the conditions of the wood pasture, the conditions for

those beautiful oak trees they painted. They said: "No! Keep

away from it!" And that's also an idea all over in the world.

If you withdraw as men, nature rebounds back to her original

state, which she doesn't. Because you have taken her

limbs, you have taken her arms, you make them cripple, because

you killed all the larger herbivores, and then you say,

"walk again". Of course not.

Ironically, by removing the large grazers from

the landscape, the so-called "reserves artistiques", or

artistic natural reserves, lost the trees that made them famous.

According to Frans, the home of the oak was a landscape that we

barely know anymore. The forests of the past were not endless

collections of trees, but endless collections of biotopes

alternating each other. Homes to mosses, that prefer to cool and

humid shade under the tree canopy, but also to insects,

scouring for flowers in the broad daylight. Large grazers

for putting the brakes on succession. And similarly, their

grazing was subject to a system of checks and balances too. For

an oak to make it to adulthood, a lot needs to go according to

plan. Its acorns need to be picked up by a jay, who will

hide them, amongst other places, in thorny shrubs for later. Like

in the brambles of species like blackthorn or hawthorn. There,

the oak saplings are protected from large herbivores, while

still receiving ample daylight. Thorny shrubs made sure that the

grazers couldn't fully prevent regeneration.

And in fact, those thorny species are natural

barbed wire. So what every forester does now — getting

barbed wire around the tree to protect — it was already in

nature. But nobody sees it anymore!

The experiment at the Oostvaardersplassen was all

about seeing what would happen if large herbivores were

introduced back into the mix, not to recreate the pictureque

paintings of the past, but to find out how the landscape would

change. But how it would play out in reality, that's a

different story. Once again, here's Koen, the nature writer

and researcher from the top of the episode,

It started off as an ecological experiment. And it

became a bit of a social experiment. So ecologically,

there are super interesting things that have happened here,

all kinds of interesting species that thrive on the kind of

management that was there. So that part of the ecology, you

could say has been a success. So we're talking about rewilding,

maybe if you want to use that term, or a new wilderness with

minimal human intervention. But the problems came slowly as non

intervention also meant no population control. And what has

happened over the years is that large grazers have proliferated.

And this leads to a very difficult scene, sometimes in

harsh winters, when there's a lack of food, and we see a lot

of animals die. Now, of course, dying of animals is something

that belongs, that's part and parcel of nature and of nature

conservation. But usually in the Netherlands, when large amounts

of animals die, we don't see that.

Here, Koen refers to wild animals in the other bigger

natural areas in the Netherlands, but his words are

just as true for the agricultural industry. The

Netherlands, a country of 17 million people, is a home to 3.8

million cows, 12 million pigs, and more than 100 million

chickens, whose deaths are simply accepted as a part of our

identity as an agricultural export country.

Can I go back and we maybe we just glossed over

it, but like, you've created this small wilderness, right?

First, it was just bare soil, you added plants, and then some

of the animals invited themselves. And then you add

grazers. And you're missing the large predators. Why were the

large predators never added?

Well, first of all, we didn't have them at the time.

Now, the wolf came in from Germany, and has been around in

the Netherlands and Belgium for for a while now, which is

exciting. But at the time, they figured that large herbivores

are controlled by food supply,

Which we would call bottom up control. But not

top down control, which would be the predators.

But Frans added to that, that those predators

wouldn't have gone after the large cattle anyways. Now, of

course, you can kind of look at the ecology of fear and what

that will do to populations. But that's where they were at, at

the time. Now, land managers say, it's only a matter of time

before wolves make their way into the Oostvaardersplassen.

So what you're saying is that they both didn't

have the predators at the time to include, and they also didn't

think that they were necessary. Is that right?

Yeah, that sounds about right. But what made the

Oostvaardersplassen stand out, is that the animals that died

there are simply visible, no longer concealed from the public

eye.

Oh, people could see them from the trains going

by?

From the rim of the bathtub!

So what happened is, we saw looking out over the

area, we saw animals dying. And this was very painful in many

different ways, not only just for the animals, but also for

people who felt they had a connection with the animals. And

it is very strange to think that there is a Konik horse on this

side of the dike, which can't find any food. And you can see

it's getting slimmer and slimmer to the point where it just can't

really live anymore in a way it should, and it will die in

winter. And then, 200 meters on the other side of dike, there's

maybe a pony in a meadow, and it's being fed by its owner. And

that is what we assume a fairly happy pony.

Koen says that people in Western societies struggle

when discussing death. Because of its taboo status, we tend to

ignore it, until it's staring us in the face. For example, on

social media,

Where, for instance, an image of a dying horse could

go viral very quickly, and would invite lots of people to comment

on that.

By 2017, it got to the point where activists began

throwing bales of hay over the fences of the

Oostvaardersplassen for the animals to eat. Dutch society

couldn't make up its mind what to think about our so called

wilderness and its management style of "less is more". The

experiment that was all about our non-intervention for an

indefinite amount of time, was cut short in 2018, starting with

the culling of the large grazers down to about one-fifth of their

original population.

Down to one-fifth. Like culling 80%.

Wow, that's an incredibly dramatic

intervention.

Yeah, they're still working on it actually, they're

not done.

Oh my God.

Leading up to the policy change, the

Oostvaardersplassen was often in the news, and even being thought

of is pretty controversial. Precisely because of its policy

of non-intervention and the animals that were dying because

of it. For Frans, and many others involved in the natural

park, the growing unrest was frightening. They received

threats, and were portrayed as sadistic animal killers.

I got threats. I got death threats. They even

threatened to kill my grandchildren, because, they

said, you have to change your opinion about the

Oostvaardersplassen publicly.

Some people compared Frans to Nazi leaders like

Hitler or Mengele. It was a dark time, and I could feel the

impact it had on him during our conversation.

But despite the mudslinging France work on large grazers was

being applied more and more throughout the Netherlands,

herbivores were being introduced or reintroduced in many places

to become an integrated part of the ecosystem. But there would

be a major difference with the Oostvaardersplassen. In other

places, the grazing population would be tightly controlled by

humans rather than food supply. Frans' grazers were in high

demand throughout the Netherlands, but the most

integral part of his theory — letting nature run its course —

would be permanently sidelined in the favor of culling.

I wanted to see how Frans' ideas were being applied elsewhere in

the Netherlands. So I met up with science and biology

journalist Gemma Venhuizen, who is the co-host of one of my

favorite Dutch science podcasts "Onbehaarde Apen".

Hello.

Hi! [introductions in Dutch]

In one episode, she mentioned that she used to be a

volunteer as an assistant ranger at another Dutch nature reserve

called Kraansvlak. We met up in the dunes of the North Sea on a

very windy day. We were about to embark on a search for an animal

I had never seen before. An animal that almost disappeared

off the face of the earth in the early 20th century. But first,

we needed to climb the electric wire that is supposed to keep

the wilderness inside of this nature reserve. This is the

Netherlands after all.

Can't let the wilderness out, God forbid!

Well, we have to climb to get in?

Yes, you have to get over the fence because of

course, the European bison stay still live in an enclosure.

Well, shall I?

Yeah.

Shall I go in first?

Yeah you can go in first, we'll see if it's safe!

European bison, or wisenten, as we say in Dutch, are the largest

land-dwelling animals on the European continent. They are

related to North American bison, but have a smaller hump on their

back and they stand a bit higher on their feet. Sadly, they went

extinct in the wild in 1919. After the ancient oxen and

horses of Europe, known as aurochs and tarpans, another

large herbivore bit the dust. Or did it?

Or did it?!

In 1929, they started with the reproduction

program.

breeding bison in captivity,

and in 1952, in Białowieża, I hope I pronounced

it correctly,

a town in Poland known for its old growth forest,

the first bison out of that program was

reintroduced into nature. And then in 2007, so then the first

bisons came here to the Netherlands.

I guess I'm just trying to picture this. So you

snuck in past some electric wire to like a dune area, to see

bison.

Yeah.

Is that Is that right? What are we looking at

here?

That's right. I mean, it's funny, you should talk

about pictures, because they actually have a beautiful

website with very carefully curated pictures. The Dutch are

very proud of their bison. Also, we didn't sneak past the

electric wire. No, no, no, there was a neat plaque that explained

us the ground rules.

I see. Oh, my God. Okay, I'm looking at pictures of

them right now.

Did you find it, the Dutch website?

Yes. This is a bunch of bison out on on like, a

bunch of sand. You know, you were talking about the desert

earlier. Looks a little bit like that.

What you can't see on the picture is that the Formula

One track is right next to it.

Everything is tiny.

Everything is tiny. And one thing I think is really

interesting about the Kraansvlak in comparison to the

Oostvaardersplassen, is that it's here that Frans' theories

about large herbivores get applied to an epic narrative

about a species brought back from the brink of extinction.

And this story of resurrection would prove to resonate deeply

with the Dutch public.

It's certainly a lot sexier than watching horses

die from the train.

Following a similar logic as the large grazers in

the Oostvaardersplassen, the European bison were introduced

to help maintain the coastal landscape and put the brakes on

succession. Gemma and I looked long and hard to see if we could

spot them.

Haha! [excited murmuring]

Oh, wait.

Are we seeing bison or cows?

Yeah, well, first I thought it was. Oh, this

is kind of a deception. And I'm also kind of ashamed because I

was like, having this exclamation like, Oh, we're

seeing them! But now I have a closer look, these are just the

Scottish Highlanders.

No luck finding European bison in the dunes this

time. Quite a disappointment after scrolling through all

those photos on the Kraansvlak website in anticipation. These

animals have become icons of untamed nature in the Dutch

consciousness. It is striking how these large herbivores are

loved and celebrated, delicately managed, so we only see their

best side. Their population is controlled —

Right, so you're not gonna accidentally come

across one starving to death on the side of the train tracks or

anything like that.

No, you're not. In the Netherlands, every patch of

nature comes with a list somewhere, telling managers how

big the population should be. No herbivore lives in our country

without our permission. And when you enter the Kraansvlak

reserve, there is a sign that lays down the ground rules:

"Keep your distance from the animals and stay on the path!"

Are these the ground rules to all of nature in the

Netherlands?

As the poet JC Bloem once said:

"Wat is natuur nog in dit land?"

As the poet JC Bloem once said:

What is nature in his country, anyway?

As the poet JC Bloem once said:

Koen says that although only small chunks of the Netherlands

As the poet JC Bloem once said:

are reserved for nature, the Dutch public have generally been

As the poet JC Bloem once said:

enthusiastic about this so-called rewilding. This has

As the poet JC Bloem once said:

resulted in large symbolic accomplishments, like

As the poet JC Bloem once said:

reintroducing European bison as a steward of the dunes. But for

As the poet JC Bloem once said:

Koen, the future of nature conservation starts much

As the poet JC Bloem once said:

smaller.

Smaller. Of course, it does. This is the

Netherlands!

Yeah, exactly. Not only do we put physical fences

between humans and nature, but we fence ourselves off

conceptually as well. After all, the forestis was defined as

wherever humans aren't. Koen wrote a book about his own

experiment that he did with his wife, Gina, in an attempt to

begin to tear down these fences in their own lives. At the time,

they were both working in the field of nature conservation,

but were mostly stuck behind their desks, inside. So, they

decided to have a Wild Jaar — a "wild year".

A Wild Year for us was trying to reconnect with

nature, but not by going abroad going to the woods of Canada or

Alaska or, you know, going on Expedition for a year. No, a

Wild Year was for us, trying to find wildness in a land without

wilderness. So we set one simple rule: we said "Okay, can we

spend more time outside and inside on a daily basis?" Which,

you know, clearly means at least 12 hours on average. And we also

said "We should do this in every season of the year"

Koen and Gina didn't want to disengage from their

everyday lives, or turn their back on society. They wanted to

spend lots of time outside while living their life as they would

have otherwise. And so they started camping in Koen's

parents' backyard in autumn, and managed to spend more time

outside than inside for more than a year — as a way to

reconnect with nature.

So if you think of nature conservation as a thing

that you do from a managerial point of view, and this is in

essence, what we see in the Netherlands and many other

countries — it's... it's a technical thing. But for me, it

starts with a fascination for nature, human fascination, and a

sense... an ethical sense that we need to protect biodiversity;

we need to protect species; we need to have areas still, that

are essentially non human, you know, where our natural

autonomy, or the self will of land, of animals, of plants is

present

Koen and Gina's wild year affirms that you can find

wildness in a country without wilderness. Their experience

reminded them of why they got into the field of nature

conservation in the first place, and drove home the point that

experiencing nature in any way you can, makes you feel more

passionate about caring for it.

You know, Toon, you brought up the term

"rewilding" earlier, which I think is commonly used in

Europe, you know, instead of the term "restoration" or something

like that, right? Rewilding.

And it strikes me from the experience of this couple that

we've been talking about rewilding as something that we

do to the land right? We, like, rewild this polder, we rewild

the section of land, and then you know, we fence it off to

keep keep the wilderness inside, right? And it strikes me that

this couple, it's like they're... they're experimenting

with rewilding themselves. Maybe rewilding is not something that

we do to the land right, but something that we participate

in?

Yeah, I think Koen would agree in the sense that he

says that it's mindset first.

By and large, nature for us is something that is away

from us. And those demarcations are super strong in the

Netherlands.

After meeting Koen I downloaded a time tracker on my

phone to find out just how much time I spent outside. Turns out

that it's not really close to 50% per day. Even though we have

never met in person, Adam and Mendel, what percentage of my

time would you guess I spent outside of the past three

months?

You look outgoing and outdoorsy... um what about

20%?

20%. Mendel?

I think you might be a little bit more like

me that you spend a lot of time I'm thinking about nature, but

in reality, you're inside working. I'm going to go with

12%.

Fair. More like 7%

Oh, wow. I'm afraid to try to figure this out

for myself.

And I too consider myself a fairly outdoorsy person

who goes for walks a lot and goes to places in the weekends

that are outside.

Oh my god, I think it'd be sobering if I

actually tried to clock all my outdoor hours. Embarrassing

even.

We could try it for the next couple of weeks,

Mendel.

It's a pretty fun experience, because once you

become aware of it, you will take the outdoorsy option more

often. And this was also something that happened when I

interviewed Koen. He's like "you want to do the interview

outside?"

{Laughs]

And I just hadn't... I hadn't prepared for it. But I

should have known — this guy wrote a book about it, you know?

Letting nature go its own way in the Oostvaardersplassen sounds

very not Dutch to me. The nature that I encountered while I was

growing up was always tidy and organized. My family and I used

to visit the same camping site every year. Between the

different fields, where visitors would pitch a tent or set up

their camper van, were little patches of woodlands. In the

middle of them, the owner of the campsite installed what he

long snaking heaps of tree branches

and trimmings for rodents and other animals to seek refuge in.

His animal highways were an imitation of the inherent chaos

in nature. But using whatever was left of the woodland

maintenance done to keep things organized and neat.

With this, in the back of my mind, it seems like the

Oostvaardersplassen was ahead of its time. It seemed like a small

miracle that the Dutch government was willing to give

it a shot in the first place. But there was a lot of pressure

for things to go well. The Oostvaardersplassen needed to do

everything just right. It needed to please every side of the

debate.

Many had hoped that putting large grazers on the landscape

would create a mosaic — a patchwork of biotopes: the

park-like landscapes of Europe's past. But, perhaps because of

the lack of predators, or the lack of political will to create

green corridors with other nature reserves, we instead got

a savannah.

Yet, the ripples of the Oostvaardersplassen have been

felt outside of the Netherlands. In the UK, Isabella Tree and

Charlie Burrell had inherited Knepp estate: a castle, a large

piece of agricultural land, and the farming business that went

along with it. No matter what they tried, traditional farming

at Knepp was losing money year after year. They wanted a way

out. And so they got in touch with Frans in the early 2000s.

And then they decided we are going to rewild

Knepp castle. So they stopped agriculture. And they had a

tremendous development. It's now the hotspot for nightingales.

It's the hotspot for the Emperor butterfly. It's the hotspot for

all kinds of bird species, which are everywhere in United

Kingdom, though going down.

It's important to mention here that the population

of grazers at Knepp is being managed. Excess animals are

culled and sold as wild range meat. The meat selling endeavors

are an integral part of their business model. Still, the

project is seen as controversial: a subversion of

their neighbors' well-maintained farmlands. Some see

unpredictable chaos. Others see a kind of magic in its dynamism.

Isabella Tree wrote a book, Wilding, about their journey

rewilding Knepp. She quotes Frans saying "Open up the box,

allow natural processes to develop, give species a wider

scope to express themselves and you get a very different

picture. This is what the Oostvaardersplassen is all about

— minimal intervention, letting nature reveal herself. And the

result is an environment we know nothing about."

So where does this leave us? How can we protect an environment we

know nothing about? As those dreamy 19th century painters

showed, loving something is not the same as taking good care of

it. Their static utopia was doomed by their refusal to

accept it as a dynamic system. There's truth in the saying that

if you love something, let it go. Only when you dare to

release your hold, when you truly accept other beings as

being their own selves, will a relationship begin to flourish.

As contentious as the Oostvaardersplassen is, I feel

like the experiment has been successful in many different

ways. Looking at the large grazers now populating natural

reserves in the Netherlands, messy nature becoming more

widely accepted, and Knepp estate, whose business is

thriving around their rewilding projects, it's clear to me that

this bold experiment has shaken up the field of nature

conservation. It showed the potential of spaces dismissed as

throwaway biotopes — that even the former bottom of the sea can

develop itself into a sprawling haven for wildlife. That amidst

all of the destruction, new things can and do emerge.

Next time on Future Ecologies, we're jumping

exploring the very different lineage of

wildlife and wilderness in North America, where space is

plentiful, and colonization is in the not so distant past.

This episode was produced by me, Toon Vos.

And me Mendel Skulski.

With help from Adam Huggins and Lili Li.

Future Ecologies is an independent production

made possible by our supporters on Patreon. You can help us tell

more stories from more places by supporting the show at

patreon.com/future ecologies.

If financial support isn't for you, then you can

still help the show in a very important way. Share it with

your community and leave a rating or review wherever you

listen. It makes a huge difference.

For photos from Toon's adventures, citations,

transcripts, and more, visit us at futureecologies.net

Toon and I also wrote a different version of this story

for Are We Europe magazine. You can catch that in Issue #15: The

Lie of the Land.

This episode featured the voices of Koen Arts, Frans

Vera, Perry Cornelissen, and Gemma Venhuizen.

And with music by Francesca Vincentie, Museum

of No Art, César Franck, Vincent van Haaff, and Sunfish Moon

Light

Special thanks to Penny Green, Isabella Tree,

Charlie Burrell, and Gina Maffey.

You can reach us on twitter, facebook, and

instagram, @futureecologies, or get in touch through our website

— futureecologies.net

Okay, is that it?

That's it. Have fun outside.