Everything in the Netherlands is always about as many disks as possible, including the forgotten virus crisis
Drowsiness and phlegm, the signs of the virus are known, disorientation and death. Victims just fall from the sky and lie there as if numb, or spin around in parks, on the street, on the dike, pulling their necks. There’s little else to do but turn it around.
The virus has never flared up like this before, say Eelke Jan and Rinaldo. Usually their winter months are calm, but now the rebuilding of the bird sanctuary Fûgelpits has to wait for the winged flu. Every day they collect sick animals from fields and villages, even if they are no longer too red. Time and again Rinaldo Korst puts on his disposable overalls, gloves, mouth cap, shoe covers, afraid to take the virus with him. ‘It’s a neurological disorder’ – and he shows a sad video of a twenty-year-old buzzard, nodding his head lustfully, brought by a concerned farmer. “And now it’s already in the fox.”
Sometimes walkers come to the fence, an apathetic barnacle goose in their arms, full of contamination. That is why the gate is now closed. It is frightening, says Eelke Jan Wiersma, ‘when people call, they ask further questions: where are they, how many, who is nearby. Stay away from it, we say. That is difficult: such a goose does nothing anymore, makes no sound, they prefer to pick it up to cuddle.’
It is a forgotten pandemic, somewhat pushed aside by the others, although the concerns are high that the virus will jump. On foxes, seals, otters. on the human. The bird flu has led to the well-known reports in the newspaper for months: so many thousand animals culled at company A, a thousand at company B, transport ban here and there. Once again there is debate about intensive poultry farming – no farmer wanted to tell me about the drama of culling.
At the same time, it is unclear how many wild animals are infected, where exactly, and which species. The bird sanctuary does not provide figures, they are not asked. The NVWA reports only a handful of sick birds for this area: a barnacle goose, eleven swans, a shelduck, while they have already deposited four hundred at the Fûgelpits.
with the storm many dead geese washed ashore on Monday, the water board was busy cleaning up, but whether the virus is being tested has been tested. Behind the seawall is the shelter: three generations of Wiersma, starting with Eelke Jan’s grandmother, have been focusing on the red of birds for more than forty years. Every year they store about 2,500 animals, sometimes double that, to release them healthy again later.
But nothing helps against the bird flu. ‘We put most of them out of their misery ourselves’, says Eelke Jan, ‘sometimes we go to the vet’. Rinaldo: ‘It’s bad. You didn’t volunteer for this. I think rossen: this is also a way to help them.’
The season started in October with a pair of swans. Then wigeon and now barnacle geese, powerful beasts that fly to Spitsbergen and back, but now gasping for the end. Rinaldo: ‘The flu season is getting longer. Sometimes we are afraid that the whole year will go on.’ Eelke Jan: ‘What we are experiencing now, so nationally and en masse, that gives a bit of an indication of what is going on.’
A little – there’s not much more to say. The reporting and culling of wild infected birds is regulated in a rather decentralized manner. Which authority should depend on where the bird lands. Local road, from local water: municipality. Provincial road: province. Provincial water: water board. Rijkswaterstaat or highway: Rijkswaterstaat. Along the track: ProRail. More than three suspected ducks, geese or swans found, or more than twenty ‘other bird species’? Report to the NVWA, named Working Group AIimpact2021. “In other cases Sovon and DWHC.”
Fortunately, they were instructed by their municipality to give up sick birds, which gives them something to hold on to, and that is how the voluntary kilometers are also paid. But the contribution promised to her by the ministry last year has not yet been received. There are bird shelters that therefore no longer report sick animals from being collected, also for fear of culling. “It would be helpful if we knew better where we stand.”
RIVM, WBVR, NVWA, DWHC, LNV – who do what to fight the pandemic, and where you should be with your infections, is even unclear to the bird clearers. Everything in the Netherlands is always about as many disks as possible, including this virus crisis, ‘there is no authorization authorities really responsible’, says Eelke Jan, ‘and that is quite… strange.’
They themselves represent the ministry.