I came to this spot, one I had been returning to for several years already, full of hope for a good sunset adding a time-lapse video to the project I was undertaking for this piece of nature only to find my subject to have been cut down. I can only describe my (selfish?) feelings as grrr! But what it did was make me reconsider all those cut down trees in our nature reserves I had seen, walked by when doing ‘nature’ photography. Do these nature reserves actually deserve to be considered nature at all?

Yes, I know that for conservation of a certain ecosystem we have to intervene (at least in the Netherlands we do), and it is the reply I often get when raising the question: “is there any nature in the Netherlands?”. Sure enough our nature reserves are actually considered to be semi-natural. A good description perhaps, more than I ever considered to be the case, and a description that hit home when visiting the spot on the photographs. I had been coming here for the last 3 years, in all kinds of weather. But nature implies the lack of intervention at all, at least when using the definition posted on Wikipedia:

Natura was a Latin translation of the Greek word physis (φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals, and other features of the world develop of their own accord. (italics added, source: Wikipedia)

I think it is evident from the picture in this post that there was some form of intervention (I expect human since I have not seen a rabbit with a chainsaw lately) cutting the life of this tree short. To me it is evident as well that we have nature in our nature reserves, we have many species that live their lives uninterrupted. So, there is certainly nature in our reserves, but maybe the nature reserves are a bit less natural than I had wanted to believe.

Importantly, I do not have any intention to suggest in any way that these semi-natural landscapes are not valuable or that managing them in this way would be wrong. Far from it, these areas provide refuge for many species that would otherwise be hard pressed for living space, which makes us enjoy these areas. But natural it may be less than I once simply assumed.