We had a lovely tour of the national park. The most exciting piece of the tour for me was the wildlife overpass. There are about 15 wildlife overpasses in Holland, and so its not as controversial even as the idea is in North America. The park was also lovely, and the landscape was quite different than the floodplain areas we had seen the day before.
Next, we traveled to Oostvaderplasen - OVP. OVP is a wildlife refuge/natural experiment. It is an area that was artificially filled in (as most of Holland was) to create habitable land. Under the astute direction of Frans Viera, there are now Konik horses, Heck cattle and Red Deer thriving in the refuge. There are also many birds. I saw: spoonbills, greylag geese, oystercatchers, avocet, great white egret. We also saw a fox wading through the reeds. It was very interesting, to see so much wildlife in such a controlled resotration environment. It seems to be working, is the other interesting piece. There are many species there now that had been extirpated, and the vegetation community is theorized to change into forest. Unfortunately, my camera broke so there are no pictures of OVP.
It was a fascinating trip, overall. We were presented head on with this question: what are we preserving? How should we go about it? Holland has a national restoration/natural areas protection plan that is so far ahead of what the US has done. There is nation-wide coordination and planning. There is effective implementation. In many ways, Holland's strategy can serve as a guidline for conservation planning in other developed countries.
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