Utrecht is the nature reserve of the Netherlands

All major newspapers featured the headline "Amsterdam is becoming a nature reserve". The original source on the story goes even further and states that "Amsterdam is becoming the nature reserve of the Netherlands" (Sargasso, source of image). The article tells us about new data on the number of species on the red list (species threatened with extinction) for every municipality in the country. The general trend is clear: urban areas do a lot better than agricultural areas. The focus on Amsterdam however is misleading for two reasons. Amsterdam is not doing that well in comparison to the other big cities, and the big cities themselves are not the big scorers. Of the four biggest cities Amsterdam has the least red list species, if you would factor in size and population it does even worse. 

Cities by population and species on the Red List

1. Amsterdam: 139
2. Rotterdam: 155
3. The Hague: 144
4. Utrecht: 140

Bergen does best with 325 species. Other big scorers: Apeldoorn 226, Ede 266, Enschede 206. Almere, in the race of becoming the fourth Dutch city, only has 48 red list species within its borders.

Animal holes

When I saw Eirik Johnson's picture series of animal holes on twitter a few days ago I decided to see how many of them I had shot myself over the last ond-and-a-half year. I thought there would be more but I have no great interest in them. They are all made by rabbits or mice (??, I do have a guide to them), but when you find one it is an easy and automatic gesture to make a picture. It is worth nothing that all of these are found within the city of Utrecht.

 

Animal spotting without animals

This book doesn't give the year of its publication but who cares. It's a Dutch translation of a German guidebook by Klaus Richarz and it helps you identify animals through their unique environmental footprint. Every second page is filled with amazing pictures, showing the wide range of traces that animals leave behind: footsteps in the snow, nests and burrows, food remains, vomit, droppings, and much more. This is not just a guidebook but a catalogue of the ingenuity of everyday European birds, mammals, spiders, ants and insects. This book is fun to browse through ever if you have never set foot outside your condominium. I am going to carry it with me on future cryptoforest crawls.

Porcupines are great wanderers

The Koyukons are a non-Eskimo people from the Alaskan Arctic who live from hunting, trapping, fishing and gathering. Richard K.Nelson's 'Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest' is filled, chapter after chapter, with stuff about animals, species after species. Most of it is practical (say: is it eaten yes or no?), but Nelson has a brilliant way of giving asides that slowly accumulate into a throught-the-keyhole vision on what the landscape means to Koyukon. The following aside about the porcupine is a good example of this. Image source

Porcupines are great wanderers despite their labored gait, as anyone knows who has followed their tracks winding almost endlessly through the forest. They are given a special power to know the landscape, I was told that this is the Koyukon reason why people should never set traps for them (no further explanation was given). Beyond this, their familiarity with the geography of the terrain is really just a metaphor representing much greater.

Porcupines know all the country. Even though they're low to the ground they really know the land. They're powerful animals. My old man said, "The whole of Alaska is something like the palm of a porcupine's hand."

For the Koyukon, no animal is just that and nothing more. Even the least imposing of creatures, those that seem insignificant from the lofty perspective of humanity, have dimensions of being that extend for beyond the realm and power of the senses. It is not a world where humans may become too proud, for nothing that lives is truly humble, regardless of how it may appear.