Rubin Smit | ecologist and filmmaker (known for De Nieuwe Wildernis, Oostvaardersplassen and Wadden Sea) has made a new film about the godwit. “We obviously don't realize that the biodiversity crisis is affecting us all.”

The New Wilderness - Trailer
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The documentary Godwit! shows that the national bird of the pastures is abroad for most of the year, in Senegal, that the godwit in the Netherlands has fallen dramatically in numbers and will fall even further, but that on the other hand, the godwit on the recently mined swamps on Iceland is sharply increases. The story of the godwit shows that it is becoming dangerous not only for this bird but also for us, humans,. As soon as the godwits leave, and with them the hoverflies and the earthworms and butterflies, the bacteria, fungi and minerals, an ecosystem is poisoned in such a way that we humans, too, become even more vulnerable than we already are.

“Surely it is bizarre that the nitrogen discussion is now only about a few orchids more or less in a Natura 2000 area? It's about us! We live in a country without clean air and groundwater, without healthy soil with six types of earthworms instead of one. So the question should not be whether we are for or against nature, but about how we can produce food responsibly in the future, without poisoning each other.”

“We have created a society in which farmers have to produce in this way and thus emery the land and our living environment. We created that monster together, by always wanting to grow and export. We deplete our own country until we can't go further. If we continue like this, we will poison our own existence. It's really not about a few animals and plants in a nature reserve. It's about a clean environment.”

“It's worse. Soon the groundwater will be so contaminated with phosphates and nitrates that we will no longer be able to use it as drinking water. Without a healthy environment, we will soon be unable to produce our food. A farmer cannot live if there will soon be no more minerals in the soil and the food value of his grass becomes almost zero. That's the crisis.”
Why does the Netherlands have a nitrogen problem?

“Yes. I advocate a system with more farmers who work much smaller and more responsible. A soil can recover. Subsequently, politics must intervene in the margins that are now earned in supermarkets.”

Not less but more farmers!
Ten questions about nitrogen
 


That's how it can be!

“Yes, but there are processes like climate change that we have less influence on. We will never reach the numbers of godwits from the fifties and sixties with more than a hundred thousand breeding pairs again. We will drop down to five to ten thousand. The godwit is always on the move. The godwit once made the choice, in the late Middle Ages, to become a meadow bird from swamp bird. Now the godwit makes the choice to become a meadow bird on Iceland.”

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