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REGION > Agricultural nature management in West Utrecht is going well, as can be seen from the recently published annual report of BoerenNatuur Rijn, Vecht & Venen (RVV) for 2023. Since the start of the organization in 2016, both the surface area and participation in agricultural nature and landscape management has increased significantly.
The collective of farmers and citizens is active in the west of the province of Utrecht. Professionals and volunteers support the approximately 300 participants in increasing biodiversity on their agricultural plots. This happened again in 2023 with a diversity of meadow bird management on 3,000 hectares, with good results. The black-tailed godwit and the lapwing in particular have grown in numbers in the RVV work area. ‘RVV’s meadow bird management shows good results. We continue to grow with the lapwing, godwit and redshank. The numbers of oystercatcher, shoveler and gadwall are relatively stable. The presence of the skylark increased significantly in 2023, hopefully this will have a lasting effect. The Gross Territorial Success of the godwit (number of pairs with chicks at the end of May divided by the number of breeding pairs at the end of April) amounted to 75 percent in 2023. Our second best year since 2017 and more than sufficient to maintain the godwit population,” the annual report states.
In addition, the participants jointly manage more than 1,400 kilometers of flower-rich field edges and almost ten hectares of so-called nature-friendly banks. The number of breeding pairs of the special black tern has been around 250 in the area for years. RVV is also working hard on the nature-friendly maintenance of more than 600 kilometers of ditches and landscape elements, such as hundreds of coppices and wood belts, dozens of standard orchards and more than 7,000 pollarded trees.
Tags: godwits lapwings western meadow area gains agricultural nature management
