managed hay meadows. Over-reliance on traditional land-use practice can,
though, have the disadvantage of fossilising potentially more dynamic systems.
One option is to trial the modified management over only part of the site.
Management of newly created habitats is not constrained by previous land-
use and offers greater opportunities to trial novel management. An example of an
alternative approach to traditional management is that at Oostvaardersplassen, a
wetland created during land reclamation in the Netherlands. Here, management
has involved introducing ecological processes important in influencing habitat
conditions (more or less naturally fluctuating water levels and year-round graz-
ing by large herbivores), and then allowing these processes to operate with mini-
mal further interference (Vulink and Van Eerden 1998) (Figure 14.1). This large
site supports important populations of many wetland birds, including two breed-
ing species rare or absent from the rest of western Europe, Spoonbill Platalea
leucorodiaand Great White Egret Egretta alba. In addition, greater reliance on
natural processes is usually cheaper than more interventionist management.
332 |Habitat management
Fig. 14.1One approach to habitat management involves reintroducing ecological
processes important in influencing habitat conditions, such as year-round grazing by
large herbivores, and letting these processes operate with little further intervention.
This is only practical at very large sites, such as here at Oostvardersplassen in the
Netherlands, where free-ranging konik ponies (shown), heck cattle, and red deer have
been introduced. (Malcolm Ausden)