A Legacy of Wilderness
researching the extent of rewilding
A Legacy of Wilderness
researching the extent of rewilding
and the shift in nature experience in the netherlands
a legacy of wilderness jacob knegtel
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
Relevance
2 Theory and methods
2.1 Theoretical framework
The wilderness concept
Evolution of wilderness
Wilderness as heritage
The Dutch view of nature
2.2 Methodology
Structure and methods
Operationalization
2.3 Conclusion
3. Historical framework
3.1 Rewilding in the United States
3.2 Rewilding in Europe
3.3 Conclusion
4. Groeve ‘t Rooth: the beginnings of Dutch wild nature?
4.1 Context
4.2 Key-informant analysis
4.3 National policy
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Table of contents
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5. Oostvaardersplassen: A habitat for the wild
5.1 Context
5.2 Key-informant analysis
5.3 Habitat
Grazing theoretics
‘Wilderness’
5.4 Enclosure
Borders and protection
Debate and critique
Rewilding
5.5 Conclusion
6. Tiengemeten: The wilderness experience
6.1 Context
6.2 Key-informant analysis
6.3 Views of nature
Conflicts
Perspective shift
6.4 View of wilderness
Experience
Rewilding
6.5 Conclusion
a legacy of wilderness jacob knegtel
Acknowledgements
Before reading this MA thesis, it is important to know that its conception was made possible because of a multitude of people who have contributed to this research. I would first like to thank three people in particular. My supervisor Hanneke Ronnes has aided me tremendously throughout this last year and a half. Within this last se-mester, her recommendations and critique have made it possible for me to carry my research skills to a higher level, especially within the field of heritage and memory studies. Her corrections and tips regarding my thesis I see as immensely valuable, and made it possible to strengthen my argumentation and conclusions. Secondly, I would like to thank Hans Renes for his lectures, that have further opened my eyes to this academic field, and of course for his contribution as a second reader. Thirdly, I would like to thank my mother for her dedication and devotion to my academic career, her immensely valuable criticism, and for making it possible to even go to university. Likewise, my brothers and sister have given me the same confidence to pursue this path within academia.
Next, I would like to thank all the experts who have contributed to this research. Their valuable perspectives made it possible to attack this subject from many inter-esting sides. Also, I would like to thank all my teachers for their valuable insights and lectures this past year and a half, and in particular Ihab Saloul for his assistance during the writing process of this thesis. Lastly, my thanks go to Bert Creyghton for sharing his thoughts and giving me the idea of researching this subject, and my co-students for their immense enthusiasm and support throughout this masters programme. I hope you will enjoy reading this thesis.
a legacy of wilderness jacob knegtel
Introduction
1.
In 2015, Johan van de Gronden published a 198-paged bundle of essays, titled ‘Phili-sopher in the Wild’ (Dutch: ‘Wijsgeer in het Wild’). The Dutch philo‘Phili-sopher and director of the Dutch World Wide Fund (WNF) wrote this book to summarize his views on the current state of affairs concerning nature management worldwide. He looks back at history and illustrates through personal experiences how past nature movements have shaped current management practices. He zooms in on the her-itage of the American painter Thomas Cole and the writer Henry David Thoreau, the works of Charles Darwin, and the Chinese philosophy behind Taoism. Often he shifts his focus to the Netherlands. Compared to these foreign examples, Dutch nature always seems to belong in a category of its own; functional nature. Van de Gronden states that he has always been puzzled about the utilitarian character of Dutch nature, in which a distance between man and nature seems non-existent (Van de Gronden, 2015).
Notwithstanding Van de Gronden’s words, the Dutch seem to have grown fond of a new movement these last few years that has gained popularity within the spheres of international nature management. ‘Rewilding’ entails the protection of virgin natural landscapes and the development toward a natural state of ‘wilderness’, with minimal humans interference. Growing more popular in the United States nowa-days, the Dutch equivalent of this term (‘herwildering’) is nowhere to be found in the dictionaries, and seems utopian in practice within Dutch nature management. Nevertheless, more European countries seem to have embraced rewilding, especially in Eastern Europe. Rewilding here commits to the restoration of self-regulating ecosystems to their former glory (Bravo et al., 2016).
In the Netherlands, an increasing number of natural heritage sites seem to be transformed to a more ‘wild’ equivalent of themselves. An increasing number of wolves, beavers and sea eagles seem to be visiting the country, to the excitement of the Dutch people. Organizations like Natuurmonumenten increasingly use the term ‘primeval nature’, similar to the increasing use of this term in Dutch nature docu-mentaries. The Dutch seem to have grown a desire for ‘wild nature’, both in terms of nature experience and nature management. This seems to create ‘wild islands’
jacob knegtel 1 introduction
within our planned Dutch landscape, as seen in the cover photo of this thesis. It suggests that the international phenomenon of rewilding has reached the Nether-lands, and has influenced the Dutch view of nature in all corners of society. In this research, the phenomenon of ‘rewilding’ will be researched from a heritage point of view. As rewilding seems to entail the restoration of lost history, the sustainable development and conservation of natural heritage and the renewed experience of wild nature, this study will look at this phenomenon from a cultural perspective. The main research question thus reads:
To what extent does the practice of rewilding take place in Dutch nature management, and how does this scenario compare to established rewilding movements abroad?
relevance
This study aims to fill in a specific academic hiatus within the field of heritage studies. Numerous studies on the phenomenon of rewilding in the United States and Europe have been done these last few years, which mainly focus on the mana-gerial and biological aspects of this practice. Few studies however adopt a cultural perspective, which involves the dimension of natural heritage management and the human side of rewilding. Moreover, there hasn’t been a large qualitative study done on the prevalence of rewilding in the Netherlands, let alone studies looking at the position of Dutch rewilding in an international context. Therefore, the academic relevance of this study is significant. Seeing how this research belongs within her-itage studies, the societal relevance that it possesses is also substantial. This study will take into account all spheres of society in order to research the occurrence of rewilding, and aims to illustrate the current relationship the Dutch have with na-ture, along with the various dimensions it covers, such as ‘wilderness’. The title, ‘a legacy of wilderness’, implies the heritagization of this diverse concept, or the way the idea of wilderness has evolved through generations and has affected the management of nature.
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Theory and methods
2.
The following chapter will delve into the academic literature, and will form a litera-ture basis for the research chapters that will follow. This chapter is divided into two parts; the theoretical framework and the methodology. The framework discusses the conceptual and theoretical fundament of this research, embedding it in both nature management and heritage theory. The methodology looks into the methods that will be used in this paper, along with an operationalization of the core concept used in this research.
At the centre of the rewilding movement within nature management lies the concept of ‘wilderness’. The term is used today in a wide manner of ways and is instru-mental for a broad array of purposes. Historically however, the development of the concept is less branched out, and shows a clear set of sources and influences over the centuries. This general framework will summarize this development, and will position the concept of wilderness within academic theory. Subsequently, the notion and process of ‘rewilding’, which revolves around the subject of wilderness, will also be theorized as such.
the wilderness concept
The current definition of the term ‘wilderness’ varies from source to source. Accord-ing to the Oxford Dictionaries, the word implies “an uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable region” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2015). As used in legal documents, such as the still used US Wilderness Act of 1964, a wilderness “is hereby recognized as
jacob knegtel a legacy of wilderness
an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain” (Rosenberg, 1994, p. 4), whereas the 2007 German National Strategy typifies wilderness as large natural areas that are strictly protected by but entirely absent of humans (BMU, 2007).
Compared to these documents however, there exists no clear definition of wil-derness in academia, as it is a heavily debated notion. To operationalize the term, most scholars merely refer to the definition of the ‘wilderness idea’, which boils down to the thought that wilderness is a natural area free of human presence and interaction (Oelschlaeger, 1991). As such, wilderness is defined as “pristine areas which are completely untouched by humans” (Van den Berg & Koole, 2006, p. 363), as natural areas devoid of people which are quintessentially nonhuman (Hintz, 2007), as “large and intact areas that have not been subject to broad-scale clearing and fragmentation” (Klein et al., 2009, p. 1289) and as a wild landscape that is free of the presence of human agency (Keeling, 2008). The reason that all these definitions are all slightly different, is because every country has its own tradition of and vision on nature management and nature philosophy. As posed by Roderick Nash, an American professor emeritus of history and environmental studies, the term ‘wilderness’ is too heavily freighted with meaning of a personal, symbolic, and changing kind for it be easily defined (Nash, 2014).
What all these definitions and conceptualizations have in common is that a perceived wilderness is a natural area where humans do not belong. The idea of wilderness explores the interrelations between mankind and the natural world. It covers man’s place in nature, its relation to nature, and the origin of this relation. To grasp the essence of this thought, a large step back in time needs to be made. evolution of wilderness
Through historiography, we can read about the time when ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ started to separate from each other. At the end of the Ice Age, the warming of our climate heralded the dawn of agriculture. Moreover, working the soil was equally made possible because of another development: the evolution of human nature (Oelschlaeger, 1991). The Mesolithic arrival of the Homo Sapiens not only kick-start-ed the agricultural revolution, but also the dawn of culturkick-start-ed nature. This idea of humanizing nature was later underlined by the Judeo-Christian interpretation of
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the world, as religion enabled the first recorded use of the world ‘wilderness’. Used in the Bible as a synonym for the arid plains of the Near East, the word especially underlined the fact that this area was desolate and mostly uninhabited (Nash, 2014). It also possessed a connotation of evil, as a wilderness was often a setting where man should be punished and tested (Hendee et al., 1978). As such, it remained a connotation through the Middle Ages, as the word was then used by Christians to refer to heathen landscapes, as heath- and woodlands were seen as places where evil spirits dwell (Oelschlaeger, 1991).
At the end of the Middle Ages, the wilderness concept lost some of its negative meaning through developments in physical and natural sciences (Stanbury, 2004). The Renaissance and Reformation periods laid the foundations of these scientific developments, but it was the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century that radically changed the meaning of the word ‘wilderness’. The discovery of new laws of physics led to a new appreciation of nature in most western countries (Dahnke, 2011). The early Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century added to this societal debate concerning man’s relationship to the environment, which became an essen-tial precondition to the recognition of wilderness as a source of human values and to the eventual development of nature preservation (Harrison, 2013). As explained by Oelschlaeger, the notion of nature as a source of human existence, rather than being instrumental to economic growth, “is the outcome of the second scientific revolution, initiated in the nineteenth century by Charles Darwin and Rudolf Clau-sius” (Oelschlaeger, 1991, p. 1).
With the Europeans now starting to remove themselves from the works and technologies of man, while discovering uncharted territory in the New World, Romantics started to prefer the wild (Nash, 2014). The solitude and liberty the wilderness offered, aside from its adventurous and exploratory challenges, became the perfect setting for melancholy or equally excitement.
In the United States, the value of wild nature, a term not applying anymore to vast gardens and man-made parks, arose only from the possibility that it might be tamed by human hands; uncharted nature was seen as a frontier (Cronon, 1996). Although the starting point of this perspective differs from its European counterpart, the notion of exploration fuelled Romanticism movements in both continents. In the US, the ‘frontier’ movement at that time laid the foundation for the designation of the National Parks we know today, with Yosemite being one of the first
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tuaries of wilderness’ for humans to discover (Figure 2.1). Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), widely recognized as the greatest nature writer of his country, helped shaping the American wilderness idea. According to Thoreau, in wilderness lies the preservation of the world. He asserts that true freedom lies not in culture but in nature, and the closer man lives to nature, the more likely they are to comprehend their freedom. Thoreau inspired other great wilderness philosophers, like John Muir and Aldo Leopold, who further shaped the American Renaissance of the nineteenth and twentieth century (Oelschlaeger, 1991).
In England and France, the ‘sublime’ movement paved the way for poets like Wil-liam Wordsworth (1770-1850) to feel bewildered and almost terrified of their natural surroundings, in his case the Lake District National Park in Northern England. The wild gazed down upon man, as a supernatural entity in all its glory and untamable superiority (Cronon, 1996). Nature in that sense is imbedded with feeling, such as joy, grief and wonder, with spectacular order in all its complexity, and with mystery, experienced as a transcendental sensation (Crist, 2004). Apart from painters and poets, several essential European critics deepened this Romanticist movement. John Ruskin (1819-1900) criticized society’s relationship with nature, and the superiority man has over nature that is too often expressed through landscape painting, even by ‘wildercentrists’ (O’Brian & White, 2007)(Figure 2.1).
jacob knegtel 2.1 theoretical framework
At the same time, different counter-movements popped up, such as ‘preservation-ism’ and ‘ecocentr‘preservation-ism’. Preservationism sees nature as a living and evolving whole, and underlines the importance of aesthetic and scientific values as part of its pro-tection-driven idea of nature management. Ecocentrists further emphasized this holistic perspective, inverting the relation between man and nature (Oelschlaeger, 1991). Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) first used the term ‘ecocentrism’ after WOII, which, in contrast to an anthropocentric point of view, revolves around the idea that all sep-arate species on earth are part of an all encompassing system of natural evolution. Leopold was the first to use the term ‘wilderness’ in the context of nature preser-vation, as he believed that the National Parks in the US should be dismantled from traces of man’s structures and presence and should see a reintroduction of species like bear and wolf (Meine, 1988). As such, Leopold laid one of the cornerstones for contemporary wilderness preservation.
The specific value of wilderness within this perspective inspired the further development of contemporary nature philosophy. Based on these ecocentrist ten-ets, a postmodern movement deepened the man versus nature debate in the 1970s. Deep Ecology valued the idea of wilderness as a dependent for human survival on earth, and underlined the process of experiencing this wildness (Devall & Sessions, 1985, p. 110):
“Experiencing the wilderness or the wildness of a place . . . is a process of 1) developing a sense of place, 2) redefining the heroic person from conqueror of the land to the person fully experiencing the natural place, 3) cultivating the virtues of modesty and humility and 4) realizing how the mountains and rivers, fish and bears are continuing their own actualizing processes.”
As one of the last regions in Europe where old-growth forests can still be experienced these days, Scandinavia set the stage for Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss to kick-start the Deep Ecology movement in the early 70s. Wilderness became a philosophy in itself, and symbolizing the culmination of contrast between the “civilized” and the “wild”, building on the virtues of wilderness experience as coined by people like Thoreau, Muir and Leopold (Booth, 2008). The next paragraph will elaborate on these people, and the way wilderness is experienced and management.
jacob knegtel a legacy of wilderness
wilderness as heritage
The term wilderness has thus been used for many centuries to describe natural land-scapes where humans haven’t left traces of presence or where man doesn’t belong. However, as more and more people attached value to the idea of wilderness, natural areas were increasingly seen as places of meaning which should be protected and kept intact for future generations to come. As the Industrial Revolution brought with urban growth and the impending loss of natural and cultural history, this idea of protecting landscapes of value set the stage for the first heritage conservation movements (Harrison, 2013).
The Scottish-American writer and naturalist John Muir (1838-1914), as men-tioned before, can be seen as one of the fathers of the wilderness idea. His writings, along with the establishment of the Sierra Club – an environmental organization set up for the protection of wild places – became the breeding ground for the US National Parks concept. Yellowstone National Park became the first ‘wild’ region reserved for recreational purposes under the management of the United States Federal Government in 1872, which set the example for further heritage and wil-derness management countrywide and influenced conservationists as Aldo Leopold. The movement also became influential to the establishment of the British National Trust for the Preservation of Historic Buildings and Natural Beauty, founded in 1896. Octavia Hill, one of the founders, also embraced the idea of wilderness as beneficial for the human constitution, though fragile and in need of protection. Similar to the US National Park movement, this idea became the corner stone of British National Park management (Harrison, 2013).
This movement of wilderness conservation, which began in the 19th century and developed into our contemporary conservation of natural heritage, has blurred the lines between nature and culture ever since. The management of nature as heritage has led to a branching of the wilderness concept during this past century. As stated by nature planner Thymio Papayannis and conservation ecologist Peter Howard, viewing nature as heritage associates nature with human beings, and their processes of inheriting. It implies a human responsibility of the natural wealth inherited from our ancestors, and of the natural capital we leave to our offspring. As such, nature is cultural, as culture is natural (Papayannis & Howard, 2007).
On the other hand, we see the development of the wilderness concept as sep-arate from natural heritage conservation. As mentioned earlier, the Deep Ecology
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movement advocates for the conservation of wilderness in a non-anthropocentric manner. Quoting Aldo Leopold, the Foundation for Deep Ecology (FDE) stated the following in their latest publication concerning land ethics: “Conservation is a state of health in the land-organism. (...) Culture is a state of awareness of the land’s collective functioning. A culture premised on the destructive dominance of a single species can have but short duration” (Tompkins & Tompkins, 2015, p. 3). In this way, the FDE follows Leopold’s ecocentric belief that wilderness areas and wildlife have intrinsic value. Although humans have a responsibility to be aware of the health of wild areas, they should not manage wilderness but rather focus on the wild’s self-renewal and self-maintenance (Tompkins & Tompkins, 2015).
This dualistic perspective on the concept of wilderness and its conservation has to do with the fact that the term wilderness is inherently paradoxical. As of today, the term itself still invokes a notion of purity and originality in nature, without any sign of human footprints. Something that is “wild” is usually seen as separate from culture. However, the earlier mentioned shift in wilderness thinking shows us that nature and culture are essentially undistinguishable from each other (Kolen, 2015). As Cronon phrases it, wilderness “quietly expresses and reproduces the very values its devotees seek to reject”, namely civilization (Cronon, 1996, p. 17). The idea that there has been a shift from nature and society as separate realms to the idea that wilderness is entangled with humanity, is shared by Environmental Professor Eileen Crist, who refers to the two realms as ‘two sides of the same coin’. Environmentalist Bill McKibben adds that human-induced environmental degradation and climate change has effected even the most ‘pristine’ environments on earth, reducing the Western notion of untouched wilderness to a utopia (McKibben, 1990).
This paradox of cultural wilderness, of a seemingly non-human concept being intrinsically cultural, does not deny the fact that one can still experience wilderness. Seeking wilderness in nature doesn’t entail the quest for an absence of humans. Rather, it entails the experience of the presence of nature at large, the authentic ‘wilderness experience’ (Plumwood, 1998). Nowadays, authenticity is rapidly be-coming the new consumer sensibility, as people want to discover real and genuine history (Pine II & Gilmore, 2007). The same holds true for natural heritage. In his book The Tourist Gaze sociologist John Urry talks about this experience of apparent authenticity, or as he calls it the ‘romantic gaze’ within the context of nature. Tourists experience the romantic gaze when they visit a historical place which seemingly is
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authentic. Urry uses the example of the Lake District National Park in north-west England, as a site which is managed according to this tourist gaze (Urry, 1990). As tourists have certain expectations when they see a National Park marketed as a ‘wilderness’, the park managers will make sure these expectations will be met. Some scholars refer to this trend as a new Romanticism, proffered and consumed via media. Here, expectation and engagement are equally important when it comes to heritage consumption (Prentice, 2001). This commodification of nature areas as tourist experiences, by overemphasizing and staging the past, causes landscapes to become decontextualized (Van der Laarse, 2010).
To understand nature as heritage, and accordingly the management of nature, one has to thus have an idea how people view and experience this nature. Before researching the extent of rewilding in the Netherlands, it is needed to get an un-derstanding of the way people in the Netherlands view nature.
the dutch view of nature
As the term ‘nature’ covers a broad array of meanings, people have different views on what nature is or should be. Not only are these differences visible across gener-ations, but also across age groups and occupations (Turnhout et al., 2004). Hence, a decision by an organization fifty years ago to cut down a forest can be looked back on with regret by that same organization today. However, just like heritage conservation, nature conservation always mirrors societal changes and preferences. Looking at man’s view of nature, there seem to be traditions and patterns visible that can help understand how the Dutch society has changed overtime (Turnhout et al., 2004).
When looking at the Dutch perspective towards nature this past century, two major traditions within the spheres of international nature management have been dominant: the imperialistic tradition and the arcadian tradition. The imperialistic perspective covers man’s view of nature as a resource, as it is knowable by science and controllable by humans. The arcadian tradition on the other hand embodies the romantic counter-movements, as described earlier in this chapter. This perspective can be characterized by the admiration for nature, through sympathy for species, the appreciation of natural splendour and the study of natural history. According to the arcadian tradition, there is a certain distance between man and nature, which
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strengthens the admiration humans have for these landscapes and the intrinsic value they possess (Turnhout et al., 2004). The ideal images of nature here are ‘wil-derness’ and the ‘pastoral idyll’, representing primitive panic and bucolic leisure respectively (Schama, 1995).
Today, these two traditions are still visible within nature management and con-servation worldwide. Jozef Keulartz et al. confirm that both traditions have also once been adopted within the context of Dutch nature policy. The authors use the term ‘anthropocentric’ instead of ‘imperialistic’, but refer to the same type of vision. Ke-ulartz et al. state that the arcadian perspective is situated within a gradient between the anthropocentric approach on the one end and the ‘ecocentric’ approach on the other end. Ecocentric nature management actually strives towards supporting the development of wild nature, in contrast to the arcadian perspective where wild nature is merely a utopia (Keulartz et al., 2004). Both in policy and practice, the arcadian tradition has been dominant within Dutch nature management before the 1970s. However, the ecocentric perspective seems to slowly become a more preferable way to view and manage nature, as the phenomenon of ‘new nature’ creation is becoming more popular nationwide (Van der Heijden, 2005; Bulkens et al., 2015).
Is there then also a predominant perspective among Dutch laymen? In a pluralist society like the Netherlands, each Dutchman has their own preference regarding the three concepts of nature – functional, arcadian and ecocentric – but that does not mean that there aren’t certain trends visible nationwide? Riyan van den Born has researched lay people’s views of nature in the Netherlands, and her conclusions mimic the Dutch shift from an arcadian to an ecocentric perspective. In general, the Dutch see nature that is more or less uncultivated as ‘real nature’. Although they are certain that humans are part of nature, a seemingly untouched forest or river landscape evokes a sense of wild nature in them. Moreover, the idea that nature possesses intrinsic value is broadly accepted. However, when asked then why nature is so valuable, the respondents found it difficult to describe this concept of intrinsic value. Most of the answers to this question revolved around the instrumental per-spective, as ‘for oxygen’, ‘for tranquility’ and ‘for recreation’ were the most popular answers given (Van den Born, 2007).
Van den Born’s research shows that the Dutch people view nature differently than they use it. Dutchmen are starting to become interested in the romantic aspect of wild nature, but tend to position this ecocentric view within an arcadian frame of
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mind. In a recent article on rewilding, ecologists Nogués-Bravo et al. refer to this stance as a ‘false romance’, as both professional managers and lay-people have ideas of ‘wild nature’, ‘wilderness’ and ‘rewilding’ that don’t usually correspond with the practical reality of these concepts (Nogués-Bravo et al., 2016). In a more recent article about social representations of Dutch nature, Arjen Buijs et al. also found that only a small group of Dutch lay people actually fully subscribes to the ecocentric values on which we ground the concept of wilderness (Buijs et al., 2011).
structure and methods
The theoretic framework formed one of the research chapters in this thesis, as it contained a literature study on the concepts of ‘wilderness’ and ‘rewilding’, set within the context of heritage and the relationship between man and nature. This framework made it possible to venture out into the field and collect data for the main research chapters. These three chapters form the core elements of the research in this thesis, with each of the chapters containing a discussion on a certain subject. Together, these three subject form the elements that constitute the main question, which was posed in the introduction (see Chapter 1). Each of these three case studies also revolve around a specific nature reserve in the Netherlands (Figure 2.2).
In Chapter 4, Groeve ‘t Rooth will be researched. Located in the southern part of the province of Limburg, this nature reserve was once a quarry. The objective of this chapter is to research why this area was transformed, and to find out if this area constitutes as a reserve where the first phase of rewilding is taking place.
In Chapter 5, the Oostvaardersplassen will be researched. Located in the western part of the province of Flevoland, this nature reserve was created by reclaiming land from the sea. The objective of this chapter is to research the extent of wild nature in the area, by looking at the concept of habitats and enclosures. Also, is the hypothesis true that rewilding takes place here? And if so, to what extent does it take place?
Methodology
2.2
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figure 2.2 The EHS (Nature Network Netherlands)(with the three case studies in red, and the Biesbosch (Chapter 7) in blue) and the Natura 2000 areas.
Source: Ministerie van Economische zaken, Landbouw en Innovatie
In Chapter 6, Tiengemeten will be researched. Located in the southern part of the province of South-Holland, this nature reserve was once a mosaic of agricultural land. Within the context of Tiengemeten, the objective of this chapter is to research the way the Dutch view nature. Also, why does Natuurmonumenten use the term ‘wilderness’ here and to what extent does that relate to rewilding?
For each of the three core areas, a semi- structured interview will be held with a nature manager of the specific reserve, who put provincial and European nature policy into practice. These managers oversee the changes in the landscape, and are key individuals in the physical process of wild nature development, and the extent to which human intervene. The fact that these three experts are employed at the three organizations that manage most of the Dutch nature – which are a the provincial
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nature conservation organizations (Dutch: ‘Landschap’), Natuurmonumenten and Staatsbosbeheer – gives the accumulated data set the needed relevance for forthcom-ing research purposes. Additionally, the areas will be visited in order to look at the result of these transformations, with the data of the interviews taken into account. Subsequently, the outcome of these interviews will be triangulated, which means that three additional data sets will be used to validate and verify the main findings. Each of the three interviews is triangulated by a semi-structured interview with an expert outside the field of nature management, a site analysis and literary research. In Chapter 4, this second interview will be with a policy worker that oversees provin-cial nature policy. In Chapter 5, an interview with the rewilding director of Rewilding Europe will be used. In Chapter 6, an additional interview with a documentary direc-tor, who oversaw the conception of the movies ‘The New Wilderness’ (Dutch: ‘De Nieuwe Wildernis’) and ‘Holland – Nature in the Delta’ (Dutch: ‘Holland – Natuur in de Delta’), will be drawn upon. These additional three data sets mirror the sub-jects of each research chapter, and are also used to discuss the Dutch concepts of ‘wilderness’ and ‘rewilding’ within an international context.
operationalization
Three terms play an vital role in this research, which are ‘wilderness’, ‘wild nature’ and ‘rewilding’. As can be read earlier, some definitions of these terms coincide more or less with an aforementioned legal perspective, as ‘wilderness’ for example can be strictly seen as nature being minimally interfered with by humans, both in history as in the present. However, ‘wilderness’ can also be defined from a more subjective, psychological perspective, as stated by Dutch nature psychologists Agnes van den Berg and Sander Koole: “On the basis of this psychological definition of wilderness it is possible to refer to humanly redeveloped landscapes as wilderness landscapes” (Van den Berg & Koole, 2006, p. 363). Here, a ‘wilderness’ is a social construct, as stated by Sandra Wall-Reinius, a researcher from the Mid Sweden University. By adopting a heritage perspective, she has done research on the natural experience of protected areas, and looked at ‘wilderness’ as a construct of desire. As her definition of ‘wilderness’ corresponds with the heritage perspective of this research, the following working definition shall be used in this thesis henceforth (Wall-Reinius, 2012, p. 628):
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A wilderness is a natural landscape where visitors imagine pristine nature, wild animals, and few or no human influences.
As put forward by the European Commission, the legal definitions of ‘wild area’ and ‘rewilding’ correspond with their predominant academic counterparts, which constitute as a popular American definition and a popular European definition. Conservation biologists Michael Soulé and Reed Noss defined ‘rewilding’ as the “scientific argument for restoring big wilderness based on the regulatory roles of large predators” (Soulé & Noss, 1998, p. 5). According to the popular European definition, formulated by biodiversity researchers Henrique Pereira and Laetitia Navarro, rewilding is the “passive management of ecological succession with the goal of restoring natural ecosystem processes and reducing human control of land-scapes” (Pereira & Navarro, 2015, p. 10).
The American definition emphasizes the rewilding potential of existing wilderness areas under the Wilderness Act and underlines human intervention and the value of predators, whereas the European definition emphasizes the passive role of managers, with a focus on ecosystem processes and reduced human interference. Both definitions however revolve around restoring nature to a former state, making it a process as described by the European Commission. Together they form the following working definition of ‘rewilding’ within this research:
Rewilding involves the process of restoring natural processes by bringing na-ture areas to a wilder state, while reducing human presence and interference to a minimum.
The more these natural processes are restored, the more ‘wild’ an area becomes, seeing how the higher degree of sustainability calls for fewer human interference. A ‘wild area’ shall henceforth be defined as follows:
A wild area is an area of nature that can be characterized by a high prevalence of natural processes and a low degree of human presence.
jacob knegtel a legacy of wilderness
During the 19th century, the concepts of nature and culture separated within the spheres of nature management, during an era when both concepts were virtually interchangeable. Out of this shift of thinking the first nature conservationist and heritage conservationists movements arose in the United States and the United Kingdom, and soon thereafter, wilderness conservation. In the United States, this led to formal wilderness designations and the creation of National Parks, after which several European countries decided to follow in these footsteps. The management of nature as heritage has led to a branching of the wilderness concept during this past century. Out of this recent branching arose the idea of ‘rewilding’. In the Nether-lands, a recent shift toward an ecocentric approach to nature development seems to have affected the Dutch view of nature. To what extent rewilding is visible in Dutch nature, and in what way the concept of ‘wilderness’ is visible within the context of Dutch nature management, remains to be researched in the coming chapters.
Conclusion
2.3
a legacy of wilderness jacob knegtel
Today, 21% if the old-growth forests once existing still remain worldwide (WRI, 2009)(Figure 3.1). Out of fear of losing these last stretches of wilderness, the rewil-ding movement became popular in the United States. In Europe, the popularization of rewilding took a different path. This chapter will focus on the growth and status quo regarding rewilding movements in both the United States and Europe.
Historical framework
3
figure 3.1 A recent overview of old-growth forests (yellow: intact, red: degradated) in the US and Europe (2013). Source: Greenpeace
a legacy of wilderness jacob knegtel
The monumentalization of wild nature forever changed the way Americans looked at their natural surroundings. At the turn of the 20th century, the ignored and re-claimed wildness now became something to be protected for future generations; a heritage. By then, most of the virgin forests were cleared in both continents, save for some areas that became protected during the 19th century (Williams, 2000), such as the first National Parks.
In turn, ‘monumentalism’ evolved into the ‘wilderness movement’, which has its roots in the founding of The Wilderness Society by Aldo Leopold and Olaus Murie in the 1930’s (Soulé & Noss, 1998). This movement laid the foundations for the official federal protection of wilderness, and made a strong case for the belief in the intrinsic value of self-willed nature (Nash, 1989). The Wilderness Act of 1964, written by Howards Zahniser (1906-1964) of the The Wilderness Society, made possible for the official American definition of the word ‘wilderness’ and the designation of wilderness areas to be protected by four federal institutions, which we now know as the National Wilderness Preservation System (Soulé & Noss, 1998). To quote Zahniser: “The wilderness that has come to us from the eternity of the past we have the boldness to project into the eternity of the future” (Zahniser, 1964).
During the ‘70s and ‘80s, nature management in the United States slowly progressed from monumentalism to a focus on biological conservation. This devel-opment can be explained due to the fact that conservationists started to acknowledge that natural landscapes are dynamic, yet fragile and easily disturbed by fires, floods and other events. During that same period conservation biologists stumbled upon the loss of flora and fauna in most US National Parks. The realization that closed natural systems such as National Parks were adversely influencing natural species, led to the emergence of a third major movement in nature management, which is ‘island biogeography’. According to this movement, natural areas should be con-nected to each other to stimulate the migration and development of species, instead of remaining gated (Soulé & Noss, 1998).
Out of these three movements, the fourth major chapter in modern nature conservation surfaced in the mid-80s. ‘Rewilding’, as it was called, was based on
Rewilding in the United States
3.1
jacob knegtel 3.1 rewilding the united states
the ideas of island biogeography, and entailed the implementation of knowledge gathered from conservation biology. Rewilding is achieved when networks of “con-tinental mega-linkages” are established, connecting wilderness areas by travel corridors and surrounding them by natural buffers (Foreman, 2004). This way, nature managers in the US can emulate the way natural areas were connected before the arrival of the European settlers. Soulé and Noss recognize three independent features when characterizing the current practice of rewilding, which are ‘large, strictly protected, core reserves (the wild)’, ‘connectivity’, and ‘keystone species (whose influence on ecosystem function and diversity are disproportionately large relative to their numerical abundance)’ (Soulé & Noss, 1998, p. 5).
Also referred to as the three C’s philosophy – cores, corridors and carnivores – the rewilding movement in the US can be seen as an umbrella term for smaller objectives which were gaining popularity at the end of the 20th century and start of the 21st century. President Bill Clinton’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule of 2001 is one of those initiatives which helped connecting natural areas, thereby increasing the size of these reserves (Scott, 2001). Another key initiative was the Wildlands Project, formed in 1991 and now known as the Wildlands Network. Mainly focused on the western and north-eastern United States, the project’s goal is to maintain, buffer and connect existing wilderness areas. The term rewilding is relevant here, as habitats needed to be defragmented and certain historic species needed to be reintroduced, mainly carnivores.
Today, the National Wilderness Preservation System oversees the federal pro-tection of designated wilderness areas in the United States. Their work however only accounts for the preservation of wilderness, and not the reintroduction of wil-derness. Currently there are several actual rewilding initiatives active in the United States. The aforementioned Wildlands Network is now focusing on the completion of their Continental Wildways, which are large protected landscapes destined for wildlife migration. Four of them are in the making, of which one is the Eastern Wild-way (Figure 3.2), extending northward from the Everglades along the Appalachians to the Arctic (Wildlands Network, 2015). A second major initiative is the Rewilding Institute, an American non-profit organization focused mainly on the reintroduction of carnivores in rewilded landscapes. Founded in 2003 by environmental activist David Foreman, the institute was introduced as a think-thank for the former Wild-lands Project, and now serves as an independent scientific organization (TRI, 2015).
jacob knegtel 3.1 rewilding the united states
Aside from the bigger national projects, smaller state-focused and park-focused initiatives are currently abundant. The wolf reintroduction program of the Yellow-stone National Park is an example, similar to the reestablishment of mountain lions in Nebraska and both Dakotas, and the species project of the Ozark Plateau in United States’ Midwestern forest landscapes (Lewis, 2015). Another trend within the current development of the US rewilding movement is the idea of ‘Pleistocene rewilding’. Coined by multiple authors in a 2005 edition of Nature, the term entails the reintroduction of species like African lion and elephant to the wildlands of the United States (Donlan et al., 2005). Ecologist Josh Donlan and his co-authors thereby distanced themselves from the three C’s that defined contemporary re-wilding ethics. The controversial article, in which the authors offer an alternative conservation strategy for the 21st century by presenting a plan to restore animals that disappeared 13,000 years ago from Pleistocene North America, sparked a grand debate in the country in the years that followed (Jørgensen, 2015).
figure 3.2 A black bear in a nature reserve in North Carolina, part of the Eastern Wildway. Source: Wildlands Network
jacob knegtel a legacy of wilderness
Although the current rewilding movement has its roots in the United States, its Eu-ropean counterpart has actually been conceived earlier. While the term ‘rewilding’ has been coined in the United States, the theoretic foundations of the movement are European (Helmer, 2016). Today, similar to what is happening across the At-lantic, initiatives are becoming more numerous across all levels of society in many European countries. Moreover, in both continents rewilding is ignoring borders, with American projects crossing the boundaries of Canada and Mexico, while in most cases European corridors span multiple countries as well.
The major difference compared to the US however is the incentive for rewilding in many European countries, such as Croatia, Sweden and Slovenia. While American rewilding initiatives today are aimed to restore the wildness of the pre-settler era out of romantic nostalgia, projects in Europe generally have a different starting point. Although nostalgia in European nature can be seen as a flame that has been sup-pressed by centuries of land cultivation since the Romantic period, the fuel that has reignited this flame of the European wilderness movement is the abandonment of agricultural land. This increase in land abandonment is mainly caused by the decline in agricultural productivity and aging of the population in Europe, and has caused rewilding to become a visible movement within European nature management. Figure 3.3 shows a recent map illustrating these hotspots of agriculture negligence,
Rewilding Europe
3.2
a legacy of wilderness jacob knegtel
which are projected to become afforested or rewilded in the coming decades. On a continental scale, the post-industrial decline in deforestation aided this come-back of forests and scrublands as well (Pereira & Navarro, 2015). Today, as read in Chapter 2, European rewilding is all about passive management, in contrast to the more active American counterpart. Figure 3.3 illustrates this European narrative.
Wouter Helmer and Sergey Zimov, respectively the director of the Rewilding Europe initiative and the director of the Northeast Science Station in Russia, fur-ther explain that the supposedly wild areas in Europe are a petty remnant of the abundance of wilderness that covered Europe 50.000 years ago. Secondly, they state that we cannot restore this destroyed nature without the restoration of the animals that helped shape these ecosystems (Reardon, 2014). Aside from the debate about the reintroduction of predators, strong empirical data for the ecological value of keystone species does exist. In conjunction to earlier studies – by Charles Darwin (1859), Joseph Grinnell (1917, 1924) and Georgy Gause (1934) – a 2010 study by Terborgh and Estes revealed that the removal of key species may result in a ‘trophic cascade’ of further species loss; a conclusion which in turn is backed up by multiple research papers today (Brown et al., 2011). Aside from forest regeneration and the reintroduction of certain species, rewilding in Europe also stresses the connectivity of natural areas (Brown et al., 2011). Keystone species will benefit immensely from both this connectivity and this revival of forests and scrublands (Pereira & Navarro, 2015).
With the knowledge that the process of rewilding in Europe is currently occur-ring and gaining more popularity, which initiatives and examples do exist today?
jacob knegtel 3.2 rewilding europe
Looking at initiatives, Rewilding Europe is currently the dominant conservation movement continent-wide. In 2010, various organizations met in Brussels to jump-start a rewilding initiative – which were WWF Netherlands, ARK Nature, Wild Wonders of Europe and Conservation Capital. and founded Rewilding Europe.
Their mission is as follows: ”Rewilding Europe wants to make Europe a wilder place, with much more space for wildlife, wilderness and natural processes. Bring-ing back the variety of life for us all to enjoy and explorBring-ing new ways for people to earn a fair living from the wild”. They recognize wild nature as a fundamental asset of the natural and cultural heritage of Europe, underlining it as a prerequisite for a modern European society. ‘Wild nature’ and ‘wilderness’ in their vocabulary are synonyms, and defined as “large landscapes that are governed by essential nat-ural processes, which create the necessary space for all of our original animals and plants, including man”. With that mission in mind – which distances itself from passive management and is more human-oriented – they focus on rewilding ten large areas in Europe – such as the Velebit mountain range in Crotia (Figure 3.4) – which are predominantly mountainous areas spanning about nine countries (Rewilding Europe, 2015).
With these separate projects they hope to set up a wider European Rewilding Network, which is now in development. They also hope to inspire other rewilding initiatives currently popping up in Europe. Among the other smaller initiatives that have already been set up during the last few decades, there exist a few notable ones, where species are reintroduced to their ancestors’ historic habitats. One of these projects occurred in Scotland, which also had a focus on restoring 600m2 of ancient Caledonian forest. Apart from these initiatives, rewilding is also taking place naturally at the moment, with wolves crossing Poland into Germany, and the brown bear entering from Slovenia into Italy, Switzerland and Austria (Martin et al., 2008).
Lastly, to what extent then is rewilding supported by the European Union? The European Parlement adopted a ‘wilderness-resolution’ in 2009, followed by the European Commission drafting guidelines in 2013 for wilderness management in Natura 2000 areas. Natura 2000 is a European network of protected areas de-signed by the EU to safeguard the long-term protection of habitats and species that represent European biodiversity. Under EU legislation, the Habitats Directive functions as a scientific platform in order to select and monitor specific areas and species for survival.
jacob knegtel 3.2 rewilding europe
However, most Natura 2000 areas are semi-natural zones and the Directive does not exclude human activities and human-assisted nature management (Martin et al. 2008; European Parliament 2009; Ferranti et al., 2013). Under EU legislation, passive management is seen as too risky as it increases the risk of undesirable emergent properties, such as invasive species and diseases, and could negatively affect the compositional character of the Nature 2000 areas. This means that EU funding and large-scale support for rewilding in Europe remains limited (Jepson, 2015). Today, most of the European budget concerning nature management takes the form of income subsidies for farmers, in the hope to stimulate agricultural na-ture conservation (Van de Gronden, 2015). However, rewilding has officially been adopted as a strategy for the management of Natura 2000 sites, and is increasingly been recognized as a tool for the development of wild nature and the management of appointed wilderness areas (European Commission, 2013)(European Commis-sion, 2015).
In 2013, the European Commission set up a working definition for the terms ‘wilderness’, ‘wild area’ and ‘rewilding’, as part of their Natura 2000 programme. According to European policy makers, a wilderness “is an area governed by natu-ral processes. It is composed of native habitats and species, and large enough for the effective ecological functioning of natural processes. It is unmodified or only slightly modified and without intrusive or extractive human activity, settlements, infrastructure or visual disturbance” (European Commission, 2013, pp. 10-11).
Next, they define ‘wild areas’ as follows: “Wild areas have a high level of predom-inance of natural processes and natural habitat. They tend to be more fragmented than wilderness areas, although they often cover extensive tracts. The condition of their natural habitat, processes and relevant species is however often partially or substantially modified by human activities such as livestock herding, fishing, forestry, sport activities or general imprint of human artefacts” (European Com-mission, 2013, p. 11).
Finally, they state that ‘rewilding’ can be seen as a process: “(...) wilderness is a relative concept which can be measured along a ‘continuum’, with wilderness at one end and marginal used land at the other. Rewilding is a process to move areas up towards a wilder state, where the final stage is wilderness”.
All of the three case study areas in this research are officially appointed as Natura 2000 areas, within the legislation of the European Commission. Although these
a legacy of wilderness jacob knegtel
above working definitions apply to the vision of the European Commission and the guiding principles of managing these areas, the working definitions as formulated in the operationalization paragraph will be used within this research.
After the 1980s, rewilding became a notable strategy of nature conservation in both the United States and Europe. Whereas the rewilding philosophy has gained a large foothold in the United States, its European counterpart is currently in its infancy. However, these last few years rewilding practices have been moving up in scale and policy recognition, as the abandonment of (agri)cultural land has kickstarted the rewilding movement throughout the European continent. Be it formally designated or artificial wilderness, from a heritage point a view the notions of the romantic gaze and the experience of authenticity apply to almost all aspects of rewilding.
Conclusion
3.3
a legacy of wilderness jacob knegtel
This research looks at the possible prevalence of the process of rewilding in Dutch nature management. As there are no old-growth forests or similar virgin natural areas left in the Netherlands, restoring existing wilderness areas is not an option here. The process of rewilding however doesn’t require existing wilderness (accord-ing to international standards), as every nature area in theory can be left alone and handed over to nature. Rewilding however seems to be more complex than that. In order to study this phenomenon within a Dutch context, a first step towards finding out to what extent rewilding takes place in the Netherlands is to look at the beginnings of wild nature. What are the reasons to transform a cultured area into a zone where natural processes dominate the region’s activity? In order to answer this question, this chapter’s case study will be Groeve ‘t Rooth in the southern part of the province of Limburg. What functioned as a quarry for the last few decades, is now a protected area in the hands of The Limburgs Landschap, one of the twelve provincial nature management foundations in the Netherlands.
Groeve ‘t Rooth (English: ‘t Rooth Quarry) is a marl pit situated on the Margraten plateau in Southern Limburg, north of the village of Cadier en Keer and 10 km east of the city centre of Maastricht. What looks like a semi-natural valley is actually the result of 75 years of mining activity in the area. This means that during the start of the 20th century this quarry was non-existent. Today, however, the quarry has been developed into a nature area with high biodiversity characteristics (Limburgs Landschap, 2015)(Figure 4.1).
4
4.1
Groeve ‘t Rooth: the beginnings
of Dutch wild nature?
jacob knegtel 4.1 context
This natural quality can be attributed to the presence of marl, a type of chalk that is extremely rare to the Netherlands. The landscape of Groeve ‘t Rooth was formed 150 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, in a time when the presence of a small mountain range dominated this area. During the first million years of this period, this plateau became flooded by sea water. This created the circumstances needed to form marl, as calcareous skeletons and organic remnants were pressed together by geological activity. On top of this rock, sand was deposited during the Tertiary Period, and a layer of gravel during the early Quaternary period. Finally, a fine layer of loess soil topped of the landscape during the last Ice Age, which today covers most of the soil in the southern part of Limburg. In Groeve ‘t Rooth, this layered history of the area can be read from the landscape, as the mining activity in the quarry revealed the thick layers of marl this regional plateau is well-known for (Lucassen, 2012).
Today, such a presence of marl and calcareous grassland has attracted a rich abundance of flora and fauna. The valley houses different species of dragonflies and
a legacy of wilderness jacob knegtel
amphibians in its waters, such as the rare ‘yellow-bellied toad’, and many grass-hoppers and butterflies on its grasslands. A thick stretch of hillside forests covers the upper valley, alongside steep cliffs of marl and flint. Unique plants can also be found in this area, such as the ‘saxifrage sail’ (Limburgs Landschap, 2015). The hilly circumstances created by man have attracted these unique species, which would have never settled in this part of the Netherlands without these conditions. This transformation started when the mining company Sibelco began with phasing out its digging activity during these last few decennia. Up until the seventies, the redevelopment of the quarry was to be focused on reintroducing agriculture in the valley. However, this transformation was soon discovered to be too impractical and expensive (Lucassen, 2012).
This realization ran parallel with a shift in nature management in the seventies, as the focus shifted towards creating new nature in the Netherlands instead of solely conserving existing nature areas. It was called the ‘Nature Development Vision’ (Dutch: ‘Natuurontwikkelingsvisie’) or ‘Wilderness Vision’, and is one of the three main trends of Dutch nature management in the 20th century – apart from the ‘Clas-sic Nature Protection Vision’ (Dutch: Klassieke Natuurbeschermingsvisie) and the ‘Functional Nature Vision’ (Dutch: ‘Functionele Natuurvisie’). This outlook gained support after 1975, and centered the idea of nature without human influences, cut-ting back on industrial and agricultural development. Ideally, nature should be like it was before the appearance of humans, or ‘primordial’ (Dutch: ‘oernatuur’) in other words. It explains why, as discussed in Chapter 2, the ecocentric approach became more popular in the 1970s. Keulartz et al. , the authors also mentioned in Chapter 2, discussed the ‘Nature Development Vision’ as well: “In the nature development vision the new ‘wild’ natural landscape is central. This vision relates to ‘primeval nature’, and people set themselves the goal of disturbing natural processes as little as possible. To attain this, human intervention must be kept to a minimum: hands off is the motto” (Keulartz et al., 2004, p. 90).
Thus, because such a specific type of nature has disappeared in the Netherlands, these primordial nature areas should be redeveloped on the basis of our contem-porary understanding of ecological history, according to this ‘70s vision (Karel, 2015). Focusing again on the quarry’s redevelopment, drafted in the ‘70s, the idea at that time to create new rugged nature in the Netherlands is reflected in this final design. This blueprint, which can be seen as a mixture of ideas by different
land-jacob knegtel 4.1 context
scape artists employed by the province, shows the creation of height differentials, pools, forests and meadowlands. Most of the marl cliffs were covered by a layer of loess and gravel (Lucassen, 2012).
During the ‘90s however, it became clear that the few places where marl was still present, biodiversity levels were much higher. Certain alien species started to settle amongst the sheer cliff sides, such as the foreign yellow-bellied toad. Limburgs Landschap, protecting the area since 1987, realized then that the level of assisted management needed to be lowered and that the area’s nature should be allowed to take over more. This brings us to the present-day situation, in which Sibelco is even limited in its activity that remains to be permitted. According to Limburgs Landschap, this opens up new opportunities for the area’s flora and fauna to develop and take over (Figure 4.2)(Limburgs Landschap, 2015).
a legacy of wilderness jacob knegtel
Key-informant analysis
4.2
An interview with Arjan Ovaa was held in order to discuss the present-day situa-tion in the quarry, to analyze the management on the ground level and to scope the perspective on rewilding of a nature manager in charge. He is an executive on ecology and policy support for Limburgs Landschap, with twenty years of working experience within this foundation.
The organization makes its own management plans, but is obligated to connect this vision with the objectives of the Province and Natura 2000, according to Ovaa. The developmental targets Europe envisions are mainly centered on the protection and development of natural species. He mentions the following about the unique flora and fauna species the quarry possesses: “The yellow-bellied toad in particular has to be protected for generations to come. In the Netherlands it is under serious threat, as it thrives in calcareous grasslands, a unique and fragile type of habitat that requires attention as well, also according to Europe.” To achieve this development, he explains, the many provincial “islands” of biodiversity the foundation manages, need to further be developed and connected. Only then, a robust nature network can be established that is in accordance to Limburgs Landschap’s vision of species development and to a European vision of connected nature (Ovaa, 2015).
This development of the quarry’s nature can be characterized as ‘abiotic’, or by external non-natural forces. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Ovaa says that the original plans of transforming the industrial area to agriculture was not in line with the then predominant philosophy in nature management. The already present population of goats were then accompanied by Konik horses, a wild or semi-wild breed of horses, to stimulate grazing in the area and the development of new nature. Habitat-wise, the goats fit this type of rugged nature as they are able to graze difficult terrain, such as the quarry’s steep hills and cliffs. However, we are talking about castrated goats that have been introduced in a stretch of nature that is artificially created (Ovaa, 2015).
It seems that Groeve ‘t Rooth is a nature area where rewilding takes place, although we are looking at the beginnings of it; the first phase which ironically is dominated by human influences. The final set of questions for Ovaa are instrumental
jacob knegtel 4.2 key-informant analysis
in confirming or rejecting this hypothesis. When asked what he thinks of the term ‘wilderness’ in his profession, he answers: “In the Netherlands we all have different ideas about the terms nature and wilderness. But overall the word wilderness is used as pr-term, like in Tiengemeten. However, Tiengemeten is an island where rewilding is in a further stage compared with Groeve ‘t Rooth, because of its isolated location. In Groeve ‘t Rooth we are trying to improve the area’s isolation by installing fences, but we are still in the first phase of rewilding”. Thus, he confirms the hypothesis that the quarry is being rewilded, and that isolation contributes to the improvement of the area’s development (Figure 4.3). In the language of Natura 2000, he refers to this first phase as “developing the area towards a wilder state”, despite the fact that the development of the area’s nature is still dependent on human interventions. He acknowledges that a state of wilderness will never be reached, while he refers to ARK and Rewilding Europe has organizations that in fact can reach that state in their working areas (Ovaa, 2015).
jacob knegtel 4.2 key-informant analysis
According to Ovaa, the term ‘wilderness’ is quickly used in the Netherlands, by both managers and lay people. When a stretch of nature can accommodate semi-wild Konik horses, people often assume that the area itself can be referred to as such. However, officially there is no wilderness to be found in the Netherlands. He says that a rewilded in the Netherlands at most would translate to a delicate and sustainable balance between flora and fauna species. The godwit (Dutch: ‘grutto’) does not benefit from a reforested country, but will be helped with a rewilded habitat that the island of Tiengemeten is currently creating. The cows and horses currently grazing the Dutch landscape don’t fit the recipe for a rewilded country either, but wolves, lynxes and other predators do fit. In rewilded nature zones where humans will not intervene, these predators are needed to bring balance to the ecoysystem. Wild cats can already be spotted in these parts of southern Limburg, but people who live here usually refer to them as stray house cats. These people however find it difficult to grasp the essence of rewilding. They will protest when wolves would be introduced in the Oostvaardersplassen for example, although in terms of rewilding that is a perfectly normal act of work (Ovaa, 2015).
He states that rewilding in the Netherlands is difficult due to a lack of ‘wilder-ness promotion’ and a lack of a solid revenue model. The ordinary Dutchman sees nature as a refuge for picnics and long walks. For these activities there currently do exist revenue models, Ovaa states as he refers to the National Parks. He has his doubts if the majority of the Dutch people could get used to wilderness here. With gates, he says, we can close off these areas so that the Dutch won’t be affected by a wilder state of nature, but even then rewilding will be a hard pill to swallow for most of them, as these fences will need to disappear after a while. Wilderness needs a specific vision of nature management, deployed in most Scandinavian and East-European countries, which is grafted on true wilderness (Ovaa, 2015).
In the Netherlands rewilding does seem to take place, with more and more nature areas moving their nature up towards a wilder state, and species like red deer and wild boar becoming the Dutch symbols of ‘new wilderness’. And although rewilding is possible in the Netherlands as a cheap form of passive management, Ovaa doesn’t think the Netherlands as a fully rewilded country will be possible. This is due to the fact that current nature policy in the Netherlands remains to be very protective in practice. Also, while rewilding is good for the development of Dutch flora and fauna, conflicts will happen as people will be confronted with a wilder
a legacy of wilderness jacob knegtel
tion and control. He concludes by saying that in places like Groeve ‘t Rooth, where new nature is created and developed, rewilding will be most effective (Ovaa, 2015).
According to Ovaa, rewilding takes place in Groeve ‘t Rooth and in other Dutch nature areas, although there currently exist many barriers to its realization. De-spite the fact that Limburgs Landschap manages this area, the foundation’s activity is bound to the policy of the province since 2014. Although the foundation does draft its own management plan of the terrain, they make sure this plan conforms to the requirements concerning nature management at the provincial level. As the government decentralized its nature policy last year, national policy documents like the ‘The Natural Way Forward: Government Vision 2014’ (Dutch: ‘Natuurlijk Verder: De Rijksnatuurvisie 2014’) are only drafted to guide provinces in their pol-icymaking task. However, this document is in fact important, as it illustrates how the Netherlands as a country evaluates its current nature management practices from a governmental point of view, and in what direction the government hopes this management will develop. In short, the document states that the Dutch people are beginning to reappraise Dutch nature, after a decline in appreciation during the last decennia. This decline was one of the main reasons for the government to decen-tralize its responsibilities concerning nature policy. According to the government’s vision, nature should be brought back to the heart of the society, by stimulating the involvement of individuals, local authorities, companies and civil society in nature conservation. This vision reflects the fact that the Ministry of Economic Affairs is currently in charge of drafting these plans, and leans towards the idea of nature as an economic asset (Ministerie van Economische Zaken, 2014).
This people-oriented nature vision contradicts the idea of rewilding or creat-ing either wild areas or wilderness. Hence, the word ‘wilderness’ is nowhere to be found in the document. However, this vision does mentions some of the
