Cafe Restaurant the Ruigenhoek

Working for balance

The dunes are home to a large number of endangered plants and animals. This makes it a nature reserve of international excellence. Not only can you find fallow deer, foxes and roe deer, but also the bittern, pine marten, grass of Parnassus, many species of dragonflies and butterflies and more than a thousand species of mushrooms.

Due to the large number of fallow deer, many of these species are under increasing pressure, which is why we started reducing the number of fallow deer several years ago.

Natura 2000 area

The Amsterdam Water Supply Dunes are part of a valuable network of nature reserves: the Natura 2000 area of Kennemerland-Zuid. Natura 2000 is the legal basis for our management. It ensures that nature becomes more robust and better able to withstand knocks. And we thus ensure the preservation and development of biodiversity.

Three zones

We divide the dunes roughly into three zones: the shrub core, the sea zone and the inner dune. In the core we work on restoring wet and dry dune grasslands. The sea verge acts as a seawall and reaches heights of over 20 meters. In various places we are restarting the dynamics here, so that the dune will once again become shifting. Noordvoort is a good example of this. In the third zone, the inner dune, you can enjoy the forest and beautiful footpaths.