DutchNews, February 12,
2016
An increase in accidents is a sign that conservation efforts
are working and the wildlife population in the Netherlands is increasing, La
Haye told the paper on Friday.
An estimated ten million animals are killed on
Dutch roads every year, but millions more survive, mate, and multiply. This is
at least partly thanks to the Netherlands’ network of 1,725 green passages,
viaducts, and walking ledges that allow animals to safely cross roads in
certain places.
Green passageways
Since the mid-1980s, the Netherlands has been
building these structures in an effort to preserve dwindling wildlife stocks,
including the endangered European badger, and several species of wild boar and
deer.
One of these ‘ecoducts’ – the Natuurbrug Zanderij Crailoo – is the
longest such structure in the world. Some 50m wide and 800m long, the ecoduct
takes animals safely over a railway line, roadway, business park, sports
complex and a river.
The ecoducts allow animals to expand their habitats past
the barriers of roads, rivers and railways. And it’s been successful. In 1950,
the total deer population of the Netherlands was around 5,000. Now it sits
nearer 110,000, Gijs Van Ardenne, chairman of the Wildlife Collision Foundation
Netherlands told the AD.
Healthy and thriving
As well as an increase in sheer
numbers, Dutch wildlife now appears to be in better health than before.
‘Ditches and canals are no longer the open sewers of last century, but
fish-rich waterways,’ Hugh Jansen, of research institute Alterra told the AD.
‘Dead animals we find and analyse are in very good condition. They are
top athletes who encountered a car.’
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