Nature Balance 2008: Wetland habitats for a changing climate
Due to the changing climate, the Netherlands is becoming warmer and wetter, and extreme weather situations, such as heavy rainstorms and droughts, will occur more often. As a result, nature reserves must be large enough to absorb these changes.
Wetland (photo: Erik Noordijk).
In addition, national and international connections must be established between nature reserves in order to give plant and animal species the opportunity to adapt or to move to more suitable habitats. The National Ecological Network is a good step in this direction, but is not yet large enough to absorb future climate changes. To this end, it is necessary to modify the National Ecological Network in a clever fashion. The creation of a corridor of wetland nature reserves is one of the options to strengthen the spatial coherence of wetlands in the Netherlands. It is also an example of making combinations of habitats, recreation and freshwater storage, and linking various policy sectors. This will not only increase the effectiveness of nature policy, but will also increase the support for this policy.
The realisation of the National Ecological Network in its current form does not contribute sufficiently to the corridor of wetland nature reserves. The bulwarks are the backbone of the corridor. Along some routes, the wetland nature reserves must still be enlarged (orange shading), while on other routes they are almost entirely absent (red shading) (source: Wolfert et al., 2008.).
