The Eagles Knew Better (but perhaps not the horses)

 “Many so-called specialists thought this would be impossible,” he said. “The eagles had a different opinion.”

Red deer (elk) and tarpan (horses) in a new wilderness, sort of.

Franz Vera is speaking of the Oostvaarderplassen – an ecosystem reconstruction on 15,000 acres in the Netherlands, 30 minutes from Amsterdam. Vera and colleagues are building a Paleolithic landscape that already includes great herds of mega-fauna including extinct aurochs (giant cattle) and tarpan (original horses), or at least their ghosts, bred back to something like wildness from the most ancient strains that survive. 

The white-tailed eagle narrowly escaped extinction. They were said to need mature, tall trees to nest and hadn’t bred in the Netherlands since the Middle Ages. A pair showed up at Oostvaarderplassen and built a nest “nearly the size of an armchair. It seemed ready to topple the scrawny tree it was perched in,” according to an engaging December 24, 2012, New Yorker article by Elizabeth Kolbert. 

Experts said they wouldn't show

It feels peculiar for a North American restoration ecologist to read about the Oostvaarderplassen – even though the whole project has its roots here. The “re-wilding” concept was developed by American conservation biologists Michael Soule and Reed Noss, who in turn drew some inspiration from the prairie restoration movement of the Midwest. But what’s so peculiar is the lack of any discussion about plants, in either Kolbert’s article or any of the top Oostvaarderplassen choices on Google. 

Many North American ecosystem restorations have been rightly criticized for not paying enough attention to animals. The Oostvaarderplassen work seems all animal. Of course, the Europeans have no counterpart to “natural area” in the American sense. Their quality plant communities were grazed out of existence millennia ago. In some ways the Oostvaarderplassen is a big farm. By winter there’s no grass left, and something like 40% of the charismatic grazers either starve or have to be shot. 

Restoring the aurochs to wild Europe is much like restoring the mammoth to the ancient wilds of North America. 

Oostvaarderplassen has about 1,000 tarpan (horses), 300 aurochs-like cattle, and about 3,000 red deer (elk). They've been joined by huge numbers of geese, egrets, and other birds. Notice the possibly nervous heron, below left. 

No one speaks of restoring the wolf, lion or bear – all wiped out in most of Europe long ago. Of course Oostvaarderplassen, about the size of the Palos forest preserves, is too small for big carnivores.

Enter "Rewinding Europe" – launched by “two Dutchmen, a Swede, and a Scot.” As of 2012, they had raised six million Euros to pursue five rewilding areas - each fifteen times bigger than Oostvaarderplassen.  

2026 Update

Oostvaarderplassen failed in one big way. Without predators, the assumption was that the large animals would just die of old age or starvation, as if that were good and natural. But in the absence of predation, during the winter of 2017-2018 of the reserve's 5,200 large animals, almost 3,300 cattle, horses, and deer died or were shot in badly emaciated states to reduce their suffering. There was public outcry and a consensus that something was wrong. 

The Dutch Forestry Service now manages and has expanded the reserve. Following studies, they removed all the horses and regularly relocate or shoot other large animals to reduce the populations. The reserve remains a hugely successful habitat for birds and other animals. It's popular with visitors. Efforts to connect it with a park in Germany have terminated. 

Inspired by early successes at Oostvaarderplassen, related Rewilding Europe initiatives now cover large areas around Europe, from Sweden and Scotland to Romania and Ukraine, reporting many successes, especially for birds.      

Note

This post is an update on a 2012 post in our predecessor/partner blog, Vestal Grove.