Learning from Dutch Rewilding pioneers at Gelderse Poort

In the early 1990s, Dutch riverine landscapes experienced severe flooding. This triggered an unprecedented effort to develop a long-term national strategy for reducing flood damage to adapt to climate change.

As part of this strategy, many agricultural and housing developments located in floodplains were relocated to higher ground, creating more space for rivers. Other measures included lowering the levels of floodplains, creating water buffers, relocating levees, increasing the depth of side channels and the construction of flood bypasses. The Room for the River strategy was born.

Around the same time, a visionary group of Dutch entrepreneurs, engineers, ecologists and nature conservationists were trying to implement their vision of bringing biodiversity back to Dutch riverine floodplains by working with nature. Their vision entailed restoring natural processes in these floodplains whilst providing economic benefits for local residents. Over time, this vision has become the cornerstone of the Dutch contemporary Rewilding concept. And the place where it all started is Gelderse Poort.

Gelderse Poort: the birthplace of the Dutch contemporary concept of Rewilding

Gelderse Poort is a peri-urban network of rewilded areas (~3,000 hectares) located at the beginning of the Dutch Rijn River delta, in the heart of the densely populated Green Metropolitan region of Arnhem Nijmegen (circa 750,000 habitants). Rewilding at Gelderse Poort embraces the concept of “room for the river”, where many kilometers of floodplains have been returned to nature and the river. Trophic rewilding with Konik horses and Galloway, Rode Geus and Scottish Highland cattle on land, and Eurasian beavers on water, has been implemented from the 1990’s alongside abiotic rewilding of flooding regimes and riverbank dynamics to restore key natural processes.

30 years on, rewilding efforts in Gelderse Poort are starting to pay off. Both biodiversity and the local economy are thriving, and the site’s ability to buffer against irregular water level fluctuations is more apparent than ever. Gelderse Poort itself also keeps expanding. The Gelderse Poort rewilding “experiment” represents a success story that can inspire future rewilding opportunities in other riverine floodplain areas. We therefore wanted to find out more about it.

wildE workshop: lessons from rewilding pioneers

On 5 April 2024, Research Ecologists Liesbeth Bakker and Nacho Villar from the Netherlands Institute for Ecology NIOO-KNAW, in charge of coordinating wildE research at Gelderse Poort, and Site Manager Twan Teunissen from Staatsbosbeheer, brought together many of the visionary restoration pioneers who devised and were actively involved in the rewilding strategy of this iconic area. They wanted to understand how this visionary concept of rewilding developed and was put into practice. They also wanted to establish a collaborative effort to evaluate the Climate-Smart benefits of rewilding 30 years on.

During the workshop, the wildE team at Gelderse Poort and wider group discussed the concept of Climate-Smart rewilding and the ambitious research plan at the site. This included reflecting on the existing empirical evidence about the ecological benefits of rewilding (led by Bjorn Mols), and on empirical data available from the site related to the effects of rewilding on biodiversity and climate change mitigation and adaptation (led by Liesbeth Bakker and Nacho Villar). Loads of studies, reports, and databases on the outcomes of rewilding at Gelderse Poort have been accumulated over the years, but most of these are written in Dutch, hence inaccessible to the international ecological restoration community. One of the ambitions of the project is in fact to rescue those from the shallow waters of Gelderse Poort and bring them to the surface.

Ravi van de Port (from Wageningen University and Research WUR) elaborated on her research concerning the societal values, alternative narratives, conflicts and perceptions on rewilding. Cecilia Fraccaroli (European Forest Institute EFI) and Tim de Kruiff (University of Copenhagen) explained their masterplan to assess the economic costs and benefits of rewilding. This was followed by a discussion about how this pioneering vision of Rewilding emerged, how it developed and what enablers and constraints they found along the way.

The participants reflected on the many critical barriers and unexpected allies they found along the way. They also shared the political, economic and cultural contexts at different steps of the development of Gelderse Poort, from the initial steps as a genuine grassroots initiative to maturing as a success story and an inspiring role model for many other rewilding initiatives.

wildE workshop participants

A recipe for wild success

One prominent take home message from the discussion was that the rewilding strategy was a product of a grassroots, bottom-up vision initiated and steered by naturalists, ecologists, engineers and private companies rather than a top-down initiative forged by scientists and/or politicians. Another important aspect was the timing and context. The participants highlighted that there was a need for new visions for nature conservation that included co-benefits for long-term river flood management. Visions must also be compatible with a good business model for strategic economic sectors in the area (such as agriculture & clay mining). Gelderse Poort delivered these things.

Beyond biodiversity benefits, Climate-Smart outcomes and boosting local strategic economic sectors, rewilding has improved the quality of life and recreational value of the area for locals and the hundreds of thousands of people living in the large neighboring cities of Nijmegen and Arnhem and the wider Green Metropolitan region of Arnhem Nijmegen.

As well as the many ecosystem services delivered, participants stressed that rewilding in the area embraces an open-ended outcome. Static nature conservation is not the prevalent vision of rewilding interventions in Gelderse Poort, but rather the facilitation of a dynamic, diverse, and multifunctional floodplain ecosystem.

The enthusiasm, commitment, and persistence of the many people behind this vision of rewilding has been fundamental for the success of the project. This grassroots energy has also been streamlined into wider society through a myriad of public outreach and institutional engagement events over the years, contributing substantially to Gelderse Poort’s high visibility and reputation at regional and national levels.

A wilder future?

During the final section of the workshop, Ravi van de Port and Judith Slagt (Wageningen University and Research WUR & ARK Rewilding Nederland) facilitated a discussion where the group of Dutch rewilding pioneers identified potential opportunities and challenges that may help or obstruct the future development and success of Gelderse Poort.

Many points were raised during this discussion, including many potential ecological, social, economic and political enablers and constraints that may affect the progress of rewilding at the site and elsewhere in The Netherlands. The attendants also highlighted the importance of knowledge sharing and the need to pass on their profound knowledge to younger rewilding practitioners. Indeed, rewilding in Gelderse Poort was a learning process with many surprises and unexpected outcomes; a lot of technical expertise was needed to deal with it, including creative economic solutions.

Teaming up for a Climate-Smart rewilding future

The workshop confirmed that Gelderse Poort offers many lessons. Over the coming years, the wildE research team will collaborate with this knowledgeable group of rewilders to bring to light many of these lessons. They will also contribute to finding Climate-Smart rewilding solutions on the floodplains of this iconic rewilding site.

Stay tuned to see our journey unfold!