Overview
- The national government and deputies from Friesland, Gelderland, Groningen, Noord-Holland, Overijssel, Utrecht and Zuid-Holland signed an agreements framework on Monday to move the Aanvalsplan Grutto into its implementation phase.
- The agreement sets a concrete target of 35 areas of at least 2,000 hectares each with 1,000 hectares per area optimally managed for grutto breeding.
- The Rijk will direct roughly €200 million extra per year toward agrarian nature management and finance long-term management contracts to pay farmers for wildlife-friendly practices.
- Planned measures focus on keeping open, wet peat-meadow landscapes, improving water quality and levels, creating nature-friendly banks and running active predator control while many operational details and site-level timelines are still to be finalised.
- The moves respond to a decades-long decline from about 100,000 to 30,000 grutto and reflect that the Netherlands supports roughly 80% of the species in Northwest Europe, so success will depend on coordinated work by water boards, farmers, agrarian collectives, conservation groups and dairy chains.