Denmark’s biodiversity in “net decline”: are its national parks the answer?

Listen to the sounds of national park Mols Bjerge in Denmark while reading the article.

The crowd seems pleased. About forty heads are nodding their approval across the pale meadow. As Jens Reddersen hands over the paper document, the change in ownership is official: the field they are standing on now once again belongs to the municipality of Syddjurs, along with a total of 13 hectares of heath. In the national park of Mols Bjerge, this type of transaction is an accomplishment.

Hikers going up a slope in Mols Bjerge. Remnants of the ice age 18,000 years ago, the hilly plains South of the park gave the area its name, “Mols Mountains”.

Following sandy paths winding their way up and down grassy slopes, Mols Bjerge is perhaps the only place in Denmark that is not quite flat. The national park is located to the North-East of Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city and spans a total of 180 km^2.. Established in 2009, it has one particularity: “As opposed to other national parks in Europe, Mols Bjerge is mostly privately-owned”, says Jens Reddersen, a biologist and the Nature and Project officer of the national park. Up to 80% of its areas belong to private individuals. State-owned land is scarce in Denmark, one of the most intensively cultivated countries in Europe where over 60% of its land is used for agriculture.

“This is challenging for biodiversity protection”, says Reddersen.

Lagging behind in biodiversity preservation

While the country boasts a variety of 30,000 different species of plants, animals and fungi, the Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD) warned that its biodiversity is in “net decline”. So far, the country is not meeting the European Union’s biodiversity targets either, which stipulate that by 2030 30% of areas should be protected. Out of these, 10% should be strictly protected areas where no human activities are allowed. According to EU data, Denmark has already protected 15% of its areas.

In reality “only 3% [of land] is protected and nearly nothing is strictly protected.

But there is debate on this data, which “comes down to definitions” says Signe Normand, professor of ecoinformatics and biodiversity at Aarhus University’s Department of Biology and head of a newly created Danish Biodiversity Council that will take on an advisory role for the government and parliament. “Denmark has reported to the EU protected areas which are basically not, because you can still change the land use within them”, she says. In reality “only 3% [of land] is protected and nearly nothing is strictly protected”. And out of these protected habitats, over 90% are in a poor or bad conservation status.

“Politically [this issue] has not been important, it’s only in the past years that people started to think of the importance of biodiversity”, says Rasmus Ejrnæs, a senior researcher at the Department of Ecoscience in Aarhus University.

The European Red List monitors species in danger of extinction on a European level.
In total, there are 533 native species of birds in Europe, of which despite conservation efforts,
13% are still threatened with extinction.

No increases in protection but in awareness

After years of neglect, the Danish government took action from the 2000s onwards, adopting a range of plans including the Agreement on Green Growth, which establishes conditions for agricultural growth, and the Nature Plan Denmark to implement the 2020 EU Biodiversity Strategy. The first national park was founded in 2008, with four more following suit, including Mols Bjerge.

Over a decade after their creation, the national parks’ contribution and efficiency in improving Denmark’s biodiversity is doubted. The national parks “make no difference in increasing protection to halt the decline of biodiversity”, says Rasmus Ejrnæs, while Normand sees their contribution as being “modest.” Assessing the park’s success through measuring an increase or decline in species’ populations is “difficult”, as Jens Reddersen explains. Although their latest report monitors an increase in the beetle population for instance, these small successes might be of coincidental nature and unrelated to the park’s presence.

If we are serious about biodiversity protection, cultivated and protected areas need to be split and properly protected.

The main critique is that the creation of the national parks did not add any additional protections to the land. While some areas within national parks such as those part of the EU Natura 2000 network are indeed protected, “these [protections] existed before and will exist after the national park, they exist inside and outside it”, says Reddersen. And tensions tend to arise within these parks because of the different economic and ecological interests, not least in the agricultural sector, says Rasmus Ejrnæs. “If we are serious about biodiversity protection, cultivated and protected areas need to be split and properly protected.” This requires areas of land to be bought, maintained and protected by the state, a costly affair, not least given that most owners demand financial compensation if they are no longer able to use their land.

In dialogue with landowners

National parks in Denmark have a recreational role and are therefore not confined by surrounding fences. “It is free to enter and in fact you don’t notice when you enter the park or leave it, because there are no fences or gates.”, says Jens Reddersen. Some areas within the park are restricted however, and in the past this has led to disagreements with locals.

Despite the lack of legislation increasing protection within national parks, Reddersen is optimistic about Mols Bjerge’s impact, which he says is elsewhere. With most of the land in private hands and over a third being used for cultivation, the national park decided to collaborate with the owners. “We wanted to see if it’s possible without having to own land. Can we actually make a difference? Or will it just be a tourist attraction?”, says Jens Reddersen.

This makes the park dependent on locals being positive towards biodiversity protection and is why a number of their projects focuses on communicating with locals, in line with the Danish government’s initial aim. From guiding landowners to positively contribute to biodiversity to collaborating in land management with the Syddjurs municipality, so far the responses have been increasingly “favourable”. “Most landowners have bought such [low] productive land, they use it for recreational purposes”, says Reddersen. And while by law the park cannot own land, cooperating with individuals as well as municipalities allows Reddersen and his team to “educate the public and keep monitoring it.” This awareness and communication process, Reddersen says, is a “more democratic way of providing protection, because people think it’s a good idea, not because a law is implemented and you have to oblige to it.” This awareness and communication process, Reddersen says, is a “more democratic way of providing protection, because people think it’s a good idea, not because a law is implemented and you have to oblige to it.”

Slideshow from MariaElorzaSaralegui

Hope for new parks to bring “change”

Yet what is lacking, says Rasmus Ejrnæs, is precisely “more legal protection and nature restoration back to more natural states.” He adds: “the public is often resistant to change. Then, serious legal protection of biodiversity which requires changes in regulations is needed.” The researcher believes that the creation of new so-called nature national parks “are going to make a change.” These new parks are an initiative by the current Social Democratic government and part of a Nature and Biodiversity Package, and would get the number of strictly protected areas in Denmark up to 0,7%. Currently in the stage of implementation, all of them cover areas which were already state-owned.

Jens Reddersen sees them with caution, saying “They are a good development and needed but how well they’ll work will depend on how much they’ll need to compromise on their original aims with the public.” Five more nature national parks are suggested to open over the coming years. Ideally, Signe Normand says, the areas with the highest level of biodiversity would get protected. These however, are “mainly found within private ownership.”

While land purchases for biodiversity protection and restoration might increase over the coming years, Normand says “we really need to take a leap forward now.” As the public’s awareness to biodiversity loss increases, so does the attention on political leaders. Last October, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity held the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) which discussed committments to protect at least 30% of the oceans and land by 2030, and the second part is coming up in April 2022. The challenges are “enormous”, says Jens Reddersen, “but this keeps us sharp.”