Rewilding Fail - Tragedy in the Netherlands - Oostvaardersplassen

rewilding is a fast-growing movement and globally boasts many successes it creates wilder more biodiverse habitats by allowing natural processes to shape land and the sea it repairs damaged ecosystems and restores degraded landscapes but what about when it fails hi everyone my name's abby and you are watching animal educate today we're going to be looking at rewilding but the dark side of rewilding when it goes wrong even though there's many global successes of rewilding there's still a few that go wrong and actually some do end in tragedy a unique nature reserve which i'm going to refer to as ovp simply because i can't pronounce the name became known to be the dutch serengeti in fact it was even celebrated in a 2013 dutch film called the new wilderness large herbivores like the conic ponies the heck cattle and the red deer they've been reintroduced over a long period of time starting in the 1980s they roamed free on the low-lying marsh reclaimed from the sea so you've got large herbivores released into the environment and no predators it's pretty much inevitable there was going to be overpopulation and other problems that would arise so it was demanding of a very intensive intervention strategy the small area was mitigated with the possibility of connectivity this would have been via potential corridors these corridors never came about which means the animals were locked in tragically in the winter of 2017 over half of the 5 000 plus herbivores lost their life most as a result of starvation the ovp is located in the newest province of the netherlands the land was reclaimed from the water in 1968. grey-like geese colonized the area which led to the succession of the vegetation this like many rewilding cases had a cascading impact the geese fed on the grass and their droppings were nutrients for fish amphibians and invertebrates and after a few years the area became an oasis for lots of different bird species for all of this rewilding success there were some concerns that dense woodland would develop and there would be a reduction in value for the waterbed habitat a dutch ecologist fans vera proposed bringing large herbivores into the area this would vary the geese's grazing [Music] so in 1983 32 heck cattle 18 conic ponies and 40 red deer were introduced into the 5 000 hectare fenced area to avoid unnecessary suffering the state forestry service made the decision to intervene as little as possible and let the animals just be wild they would only intervene to exterminate animals if they were sick or suffering in any way all was well and in september 2017 there were over five thousand herbivores living in the area then tragedy struck when the long cold winter caused over three thousand of these individuals to die around ninety percent of these animals were shot by the dutch state forestry service and this was to avoid them dying of starvation mortality statistics do vary when you look at how many animals were shot in greater time periods since they were introduced animal welfare activists were absolutely outraged with what happened and they demanded change in the management of the reserve activists state that the neglect went beyond starvation the horses had open wounds and their hooves were broken their teeth were broken the protesters did what they could to help the animals and in the end they were throwing hay over the fences to feed them but they were also putting crosses and coffins in the reserve some animal biologists have actually deemed the project as a complete failure one of these biologists patrick venn started a petition to stop the animal cruelty at this nature reserve and over 125 000 people signed it to avoid unregulated animal populations intervention is obviously required since that catastrophic winter of 2017 the number of animals that are allowed to graze in the area have now been capped this is obviously to prevent overpopulation management have also transitioned the reserve into a meat producing recreational area and this is obviously in place of rewilding researchers and ecologists suggest that these herbivores these animals in the reserve have suffered enough at attempts of management and actually they should go to a larger area they believe that the non-interventionist approach would have been more successful with just smaller animals and birds the promise of connectivity in the form of corridors never happened maybe because of the expense or other challenges but there was nothing else to replace that some state that that area was never appropriate for that type of rewilding it led to a very unethical situation animals need large territories so they can migrate especially in times of food scarcity they also need predators to regulate the populations so in the absence of both of these the animals they starved they were left to starved it was very much like a zoo situation because they were locked in they were fenced in but they were uncared for so scientists conclude that the overpopulation of animals was down to poor ecological planning and management of which animal cruelty was the outcome it's so important that rewilding is managed carefully when it comes to environmental protection problem solving and management ovp the nature reserve really highlights the necessity of understanding ecological complexity animal behavior and sentience that's it from me today i really hope you've enjoyed the episode i know it's not particularly a nice subject to cover but it's really important to understand view welding and know it's not always going to be a success story and we do have to just keep on learning from where we have gone wrong please do subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and do comment below or give the video a like if you've enjoyed thanks so much and until next time

Channel: Animal Educate

Views: 9,533

Keywords: rewildingfail, rewildinggonewrong, tragedyinthenetherlandsrewilding, konikponies, heckcattle, reddeer, animalabuserewilding, oostvaardersplassen

Id: LuaBceQdF1s

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 10 2021