The discussion about the future of the Boerbos in Rolde is not over after Tuesday's information evening on 27 October. The municipality of Aa en Hunze and Bosgroep Noord-Oost-Nederland explained the draft plan for managing the municipal part of the forest at MFC De Boerhoorn. The municipality maintains that there will be no large-scale clearing, but residents have again raised their concerns with the council and the executive board.
The Boerbos is a forest area of 18 hectares that is partly owned by the municipality. The management plan concerns that municipal part. According to Aa en Hunze, the quality of parts of the forest is declining. Trees and plants would be less vigorous, the variety of plant species is said by the municipality to be decreasing, and in some places there are safety issues, such as overhanging branches.
The municipality says it wants to address those problems while preserving the forest's existing values. It mentions recreation, archaeology, ecology and cultural history. According to the municipality, the goal is not to give the forest a different character.
- Gemeentelijk deel van het BoerbosHet deel van het Boerbos dat van de gemeente is en waar het beheerplan over gaat.
- MFC De BoerhoornHier was op dinsdag 27 oktober de informatieavond over het conceptbeheerplan.
Residents ask for more openness
A group of residents is not reassured by this. In September, Ms Zwaag and Mr Plaatje addressed the municipal council about their concerns. Among other things, they feared clear-cutting and felt that residents were insufficiently involved. Alderman Vedder then said that the management plan would not lead to large-scale clear-cutting. An additional information evening was also announced, at which the draft management plan would be made available.
That extra evening was held on Tuesday 27 October at De Boerhoorn. Shortly before that, on 21 October, residents again sent a letter to the municipal council and the executive board. On 27 October, a letter from Friends of the Boerbos was also registered. That group is asking for genuine participation, disclosure of the studies and postponement of irreversible work in the Boerbos.
There is also a petition called Protect our forest. D66 reported during the council meeting of 17 September that the petition then had 783 signatures. At the time of writing, that number is 866.
Timeline toward 2027
On 7 April, the executive board decided to apply participation when drawing up the management plan. The executive board also adopted a participation policy at that time. Directly involved parties would be included in the plan as a sounding board group.
The municipality took implementation from the first quarter of 2027 into account in its planning. That is an expectation in the schedule and does not yet mean that all work is definitively fixed. The exact measures, including any number of trees to be felled, have not been independently determined on the basis of the available documents.
