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Wild’ What the Oostvaardersplassen Can Tell Us About Dutch Constructions of Nature

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Wild’ What the Oostvaardersplassen Can Tell Us About Dutch Constructions of Nature Meghan Buurmans Debating the ‘wild’ What the Oostvaardersplassen can tell us about Dutch constructions of nature Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History Abstract Buurmans M. 2021. Debating the ‘wild’: What the Oostvaardersplassen can tell us about Dutch constructions of nature. Uppsala, Dept of Archaeology and Ancient History. This thesis discusses key conflicts in the Oostvaardersplassen. These conflicts include the contestation of the Oostvaardersplassen as wilderness, the debate on grazer mortality, and the debate on culling. Through Actor Network Theory, the actors involved in the Oostvaardersplassen are discussed. A number of documents are selected for the different actors to do a qualitative analysis of communication on the Oostvaardersplassen. The Oostvaardersplassen is a unique area, claimed from the sea and fully manmade, with a management philosophy with aspects from rewilding theories. Recurring themes in the actor documents are studied, such as the definitions of the terms ‘nature’ ‘wilderness’ and the use of interventions. In addition, the documents are analysed on their use of rhetoric tools and the way they discuss the general public in the Oostvaardersplassen debates. The nature of the Oostvaardersplassen as an experiment, the strong presence of emotions in the debates and the unclear definition of goals and purposes lead to a more fractured stage for the actors and the debate. While the Oostvaardersplassen is successful as an area for experimentation, learning, and as a nature reserve in the midst of the Netherlands, these concluding issues are an important consideration in making the Oostvaardersplassen’s debate less volatile. Keywords: The Oostvaardersplassen, Construction of nature, Nature management, Intervention, Culling, Grazers, Wilderness, Bird reserve. Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History (45 credits), supervisor: Anneli Ekblom, Fall term 2021 © Meghan Buurmans Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Box 626, 75126 Uppsala, Sweden 2 Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................5 1.1. Protection of Environment in Dutch Policy................................................................................6 1.2. Previous studies on the Oostvaardersplassen .............................................................................8 1.3. A note on translations .................................................................................................................9 1.4 Presentation of the outline of the thesis .....................................................................................10 2. Method and Theory ..........................................................................................................................11 2.1. Actor Network theory ...............................................................................................................11 2.1.1. The actors ..........................................................................................................................12 2.1.2. The network ......................................................................................................................15 2.2. Analysing Topics/events and related debates. ..........................................................................15 2.3. Discourse Analysis ...................................................................................................................16 3. Oostvaardersplassen and the idea of Rewilding ...............................................................................19 3.1. A natural experiment: The start of the Oostvaardersplassen ....................................................19 3.2. Creating a reserve .....................................................................................................................21 3.3. The Changing Ecology of the Oostvaardersplassen .................................................................23 3.4. Discussion .................................................................................................................................25 4. The harsh winters of 2005 and 2010 ................................................................................................27 4.1 The debate ..................................................................................................................................28 4.2. The winter of 2005....................................................................................................................28 4.2.1 The ICMO report - 2005 ....................................................................................................29 4.2.2. The RDA report - 2005 .....................................................................................................31 4.3 The 2010 winter .........................................................................................................................33 4.3.1 ICMO2 – 2010 ...................................................................................................................35 4.3.2 The Tweede Kamer debate 2010 .......................................................................................37 4.3.3 The Minister (comments on the Tweede Kamer debate) ...................................................40 4.4 News Reporting .........................................................................................................................42 4.5. Discussion .................................................................................................................................45 5. The culling debate ............................................................................................................................46 5.1 The debate ..................................................................................................................................46 5.2 Formal actors .............................................................................................................................48 5.2.1 Commisie van Geel ............................................................................................................48 5.2.2 Provincial order ..................................................................................................................52 5.2.3 Magazine Staatsbosbeheer .................................................................................................53 5.3 News reporting and social media ...............................................................................................55 5.3.1 International news ..............................................................................................................55 5.3.3 Social media .......................................................................................................................57 5.3 Discussion ..................................................................................................................................60 6. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................61 6.1. The changing character of Oostvaardersplassen? .....................................................................61 6.2. Positioning amongst Actors ......................................................................................................61 6.3 Key points of Contention ...........................................................................................................63 6.3.1 The Oostvaardersplassen as an experiment .......................................................................63 6.3.2 Emotionality vs rationality .................................................................................................63 3 6.3.3 Unclear definition of goals and purpose ............................................................................64 6.4. Oostvaardersplassen and the future ..........................................................................................65 Summary ..............................................................................................................................................66 References ............................................................................................................................................67 4 1. Introduction Many books and papers have been written on the way we use language with regards to nature. Are we a part of nature? Opposite to it? A blessing or a curse? Over time, views have changed, and definitions have changed also. For the most part, we like to think of nature as a ‘good thing’. More nature is better, green is healthy and hip, a healthy environment is a goal to strive for. As much as we have spent the past 150 years, or even much longer, trying to distance ourselves from nature, with modernity and industrialism trying hard to regulate it, we now see the importance of an unregulated and ‘wild’ nature. Globally our aim is now to try to protect natural spaces, animals and plants. Target 11 of the Convention for Biological Diversity, which was ratified by over 175 countries (Secretariat of the Convention of Biological Diversity 2000: 8) for example states that 17% of the land in a country should be conserved as important ecosystems (Convention of Biological Diversity n.d.). We are now even claiming to give land ‘back to nature’, either by creating
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