The EconomistJune 9th 2018 Europe 43(^2) eastern Europe that constitute the main ob-
stacle to a compromise.
Paradoxically, Mr Salvini may get a
more receptive hearing further west in
countries that are the ultimate destination
of many of the migrants crossing the Medi-
terranean. The prospect of a government
in Rome keen to tighten border control
should be welcome there. Austria’s interi-
or minister, Herbert Kickl, a member of the
right-wing Freedom Party, greeted Mr Sal-
vini as an ally. More significantly, Ger-
many’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, took a
more sympathetic line than before in an
interview in which she said Italians had
felt left alone to cope with the migrants
who began to pour out of Libya after the
fall of its late dictator, Muammar Qaddafi,
in 2011. Her remark did not go unnoticed in
Italy. Sometimes words speak louder than
silence. 7
Dutch environmentalism
Starving the beasts
O
N A cloudy night Anderijn Peeters, a
horse-trainer turned environmental
protester, parks at a wildlife preserve
30km east of Amsterdam. The back of her
van is full of hay. Two more cars of activ-
ists pull up, after driving circuitously
through neighbouringsuburbs to con-
fuse police. Their mission: to feed the
wild animals. They sling a bale of hay
over the fence. Suddenly, a pickup truck
driven by off-duty park rangers speeds
into the lot, fog lights blazing. Angry
words are exchanged. Soon the police
arrive. “This is something I’m prepared to
go to jail for,” says Ms Peeters. But the
officers leave it at a scolding.
Ms Peeters and thousands of others
are up in arms over the government’s
policies in the Oostvaardersplassen, a
park of 56 square km reclaimed from the
sea in the 1960s. In 1995 the forest service
adopted a plan inspired by a maverick
ecologist, Frans Vera, who wanted to
recreate what he believed was the di-
verse pre-human ecosystem of the Neth-
erlands. Rangers introduced red deer,
wild horses and Heck cattle, a German
breed created to mimic the ancient au-
rochs, and let them roam. The result is a
landscape of plains, wetlands and forest
roamed by thousands of hoofed mam-
mals. Some call it the Dutch Serengeti.
The problems begin in winter. With
no predators, the herds are limited only
by the food supply. (Mr Vera wanted to
re-introduce the wolf, but residents were
not enthusiastic.) In December, the ani-
mals begin to go hungry and edge up to
the fences. Passers-by watch them starve.
But the Netherlands has one of the
world’s strongest animal-rights move-
ments (the Party for the Animals has five
seats in parliament). Its outrage has led
the forest service to compromise: rangers
now shoot animals that are too far gone.
Feeders prefer to intervene.
Activists like Ms Peeters say the Neth-
erlands is too small for a wild park, and
that fencing animals in makes humans
responsible for them. But Joke Bijl, a
forest service spokeswoman, says this is a
misunderstanding: all animal popula-
tions run up against barriers. A cull may
be on the cards, but the animal under-
ground expects to be back next winter,
dodging the rangers with bales of hay.
LELYSTAD
A park that mimics nature angers animal-rights activists
T
HEY have been living in tents in parks
and community centres, and the au-
thorities are straining to care for them. But
23 years after the end of the Bosnian war,
which saw 2.2m people, or half the popula-
tion, displaced, the new refugees in Bosnia
are Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis and others.
Some 500 a week have recently been cross-
ing into the country, on what they hope is
their way to western Europe.
The Balkan route to Europe from Syria
via Turkey closed in 2016, so it has been a
big surprise that so many refugees have
suddenly started turning up. Some are flee-
ing recent fighting, but most are not. Ac-
cording to Peter Van der Auweraert, of the
International Organisation for Migration,
the majority of the new arrivals are people
who have been stuck in Serbia or Greece
and, frustrated by their situation, are trying
this new route. Refugee centres in Serbia
are rapidly emptying out. Others come via
Albania and Montenegro.
Last year only 755 new refugees were
registered in Bosnia; this year the number
has already reached almost 5,000, of
whom half may have already left for Croa-
tia, an EU member since 2013 and formerly,
with Bosnia, part of Yugoslavia. On May
30th Croatian police opened fire on a van
carrying migrants crossing from Bosnia, in-
juring two children. Ministers from the re-
gion are due to hold a meeting on the
mounting crisis in Sarajevo, the Bosnian
capital, on June 7th.
In an effort to halt the flow, Bosnia has
sent extra police to its borders with Serbia
and Montenegro. Hungary, which built a
highly effective fence on its border with
Serbia to stop illegal crossings, has prom-
ised 23km of razor-wire fencing to Monte-
negro to help seal parts of its border with
Albania. Among the refugees are a new
category. Some 10% are Iranians. Last year
Serbia and Iran stopped requiring visas for
each other’s citizens. In March cheap direct
flights between the two countries began.
The new arrivals, most of them Mus-
lims, have stirred up political arguments.
When Bosnia’s bloody war ended in 1995,
the country was divided into two: the
mainly-Serb Republika Srpska and the Bos-
niak (ie, Muslim) and Croat Federation.
Milorad Dodik, the president of Republika
Srpska, claims that Bosniak politicians
have a secret plan to import Muslim mi-
grants to change Bosnia’s demography and
thereby take control of the whole country.
In fact, few if any of them want to stay. But
with elections looming in October, facts
are not likely to stand in the way of politi-
cal point-scoring. 7
Bosnia
Playing politics
with refugees
A mysterious influx
SERBIA
MACEDONIA
BOSNIA
ALBANIA
GREECE
KOS.
MONTE-
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HUNGARY
ROMANIA
AUSTRIA
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Sarajevo
BU
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Republika Srpska
Bosniak-Croat
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EU members
150 km