More flowers, bees, healthier deer and a chance for the forest to rejuvenate. If we learn to live with the wolf, nature can flourish. This requires connected nature reserves, a more flexible nature policy and a little creativity, ecologists tell NU.nl.
Deer are more alert. In some places they graze more and in others less. This changes the vegetation: nutrient-poor patches are created in the grass where rare flowering herbs emerge. Further on, the forest can rejuvenate.
Even foxes should be on their guard. Birds and, for example, the beaver benefit from this. And more beaver dams create more pools, with kingfishers, amphibians and dragonflies.
In our minds we could see the Oostvaardersplassen changing like this. But this famous example concerns another natural area – Yellowstone National Park in the United States.
Without a wolf, deer starve en masse in winter
The wolf returned there 27 years ago. Nature soon began to recover and the area has now increasingly returned to an old ecological balance, with greater species richness.
Surprisingly, the latest species to benefit from the wolf’s return is its most important prey: the wapiti. It remotely resembles the Dutch red deer. The moose that live there are now strong and healthy, and the number is stable: about seven thousand deer.
It was very different before the return of the wolf. The deer population in Yellowstone bounced back and forth. And this is reminiscent of the Oostvaardersplassen. There, too, the population of the “large grazers” explodes every few years, after which they starve en masse during a cold winter.
Those explosions aren’t good for the area either: if you drive past them on a train, you see a large, bare grassy plain. Even the fence around it reminds me of a deer park.
Oostvaardersplassen and Veluwe are becoming more “robust” with close forest connections
The solution for the Oostvaardersplassen is not so much for the wolf to get in, but for the deer to get out, ecologists say. There was once an ambitious plan to connect fragmented nature areas in the Netherlands – the ecological main structure.
The most iconic link: the Oostvaarderswold – a narrow strip of forest through the Flevopolder, between the Oostvaardersplassen and the Veluwe, complemented by an ecoduct on the A6.
With the arrival of the Rutte I cabinet, much of this naturalistic plan disappeared into the trash. The connection between the Oostvaardersplassen and the Veluwe never materialised. While such connections can actually help people and large animals live side by side.
The World Wildlife Fund, among others, therefore wants to keep the plan alive. “Linking large natural areas together is the best way to prevent problems with wildlife,” says WWF’s Elke van Gils. She is an expert in preventing conflicts between humans and animals, even in tropical countries.
“Such connections are also needed to achieve a more robust nature, which is more resilient to climate change.”
The Veluwe for puppies, the Oostvaardersplassen for hunting
Strong connections are especially important to the wolf for its food supply, says ecologist and wolf expert Glenn Lelieveld of the Mammal Association. “In the current situation, red deer cannot leave the Oostvaardersplassen, but wolves can in principle enter it, among other things through small holes in the enclosure intended for deer.”
But Lelieveld thinks the area isn’t very wolf-friendly. A wolf was seen in the Flevopolder, but didn’t stay there. This is due to the subsoil, which is made up of clay.
Wolves starting a pack prefer high sandy ground, in which they can dig a hole. They find them in the Veluwe. But if the areas are better connected, they can get food in the Oostvaardersplassen.
The wolf has been back in the Veluwe since 2018 and the first cubs were born in 2019. Restoring nature requires a lot of patience, but ecologists also expect an enrichment of nature in the Veluwe due to the return of the predator. That would be it rare heather butterflies can take advantage of it.
They think that better choices should be made between recreation areas and rest areas for wildlife in the Veluwe.
The protection of sheep at night seems to enrich the moor
And then there are the flocks of sheep. They have also walked the moors for many centuries. The protection works with the dogs during the day, but at night the sheep went to the fold. Those old wooden stables have been the hub of agriculture in the eastern Netherlands for centuries, with the deep stable system: moorland with sheep droppings made small-scale arable farming possible around the “esdorpen”.
Even now, the herds of sheep on moorland areas again have to be secured overnight. This is done in the sheepfolds during lambing season, but also outdoors by corralling the sheep at night behind electric fencing. This is very effective for protection against wolves, says ecologist Annemieke Ouwehand of Natuurmonumenten.
But there is another advantage, he discovered in the Sallandse Heuvelrug moorland: differences arise between areas that are heavily grazed and places where a lot of sheep droppings fall. Among other things, they can help against acidification caused by nitrogen pollution. ‘In the night sections, the sheep are kicking back the moss layer. And now we’re seeing the plants come back in various places where we’ve had night sections that had disappeared from almost all of the moor.’
These are some examples of what the coexistence of man, agriculture, nature and the wolf could be like in practice. But according to Lelieveld, it’s also ultimately a mental issue. “Wolves do far less crazy things than some people think.”
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