Jaap van 't Veen's photos with the keyword: raised bog

The Engbertsdijksvenen owes its name to the Engberts farming family. The area used to consist of a four to seven meter thick layer of peat that was formed around 10,000 years ago. The original peat bog was about 180,000 hectares in size. Peat extraction started relatively late and was a small-scale operation until the 19th century. Farmers used the peat for their own needs, for instance to stoke their stoves. At the beginning of the 20th century, the peat extraction of the Engbertsdijksvenen was done on a large scale and lasted until the middle of the last century. From 1953, Staatsbosbeheer (a Dutch government organization for forestry and the management of nature reserves) bought land in the Engbertsdijksvenen . Peat was last excavated in 1984. The area covers an area of 1,000 ha. A small core of peat of about 17 ha still has its original thickness. Only 25 hectares of "living" raised bog remain in the Netherlands. The Engbertsdijksvenen has been given a protected status in several respects. The Staatsnatuurmonument (National natural monument) has also been designated a Natura 2000 area. It is therefore part of a European network of high-quality nature reserves. It is an international wetland and the largest and most important raised bog area in Western Europe.

At the end of the last Ice Age - about 10 000 years ago - an expansive area of peat bogs covered a big piece of the provinces of Drenthe, Friesland and even a piece of Germany. From the late Middle Ages of, the peat was excavated and transported with ships to the cities in the western part of the Netherlands and was used as heating on a small scale. Large-scale land clearance for agriculture between 1600 and 1900 fundamentally changed the character of the region. The rugged peat moor of Fochteloërveen (3.000 ha) and a few smaller cores was all that was left. The peat degraded and turned into earth after the peat bog was drained for tree-planting and farming. Like all Dutch peat areas the quality of the habitats, especially of active raised bog, was impoverished severely during the last decades. Now the raised bog area is one of the few bogs in the Netherlands where living peat can be found and it is even growing again. Since 1999 the hydrological conditions of the most species rich peat area of the peat bog were improved by an ingenious system of dams. It was a great surprise that, starting in 2001, cranes were breeding in this area. They were the first breeding cranes in the Netherlands since the 18th century. Nowadays also the number of non-breeding cranes in summer is increasing. The nature reserve has a couple of walking and cycling paths and a lookout tower with breathtaking views over the area. It is owned and managed by Natuurmonumenten , a Dutch society for nature conservation.