Worldlog week 13 – 2015

Last Wednesday, 18 March, the Provincial Council and Water Board (Dutch administrative structure for water management) elections were held. Together we have conducted a great campaign. And not for nothing because the results were fantastic! We have grown from 7 to as many as 18 seats in the Provincial Councils and from 7 Water Board administrators to 14. With a growth factor of over 2.5 we made the greatest gains in relative terms of all national parties. This means that we have definitely won a second seat in the Senate, and maybe even a third.

Our parliamentarians, our employees, our volunteers, everyone has worked enormously hard to actively communicate our important message. That the earth cannot provide endless growth and that it is now time to take action.

It is great to see that so many people are involved in improving animal welfare, nature and the environment. These themes take place at provincial level for the most part, so it is great that the voice of compassion and sustainability will be heard even louder here. I congratulate our members in the Provincial Councils and Water Boards on this great success!

Thank you to all voters!

We conducted our campaign all over the country to inform voters of what we are going to do in the provinces and water boards, and to raise topical subjects like megastables and hunting.

As an MP I was honoured to be present at a number of these campaign activities. In the Province of Overijssel we demonstrated against hunters who feed wild animals to attract these towards them so that they can easily shoot them. Of course, such behaviour of hunters cannot be reconciled with the responsible fauna policy they promote themselves.

In the Province of Utrecht we drew attention to the forgotten hunting victims such as coots.

In the Province of Brabant there is a nature area where wild boars are often hunted, which is marked as “Habitat for Wild Boar”.

Every year about ten thousand geese are killed around Schiphol, the largest airport in the Netherlands, for the safety of air traffic. Geese are attracted to Schiphol because of the great supply of food on the agricultural fields around the airport. We advocate solar fields with solar panels. The solar panels will frighten away the geese and sustainable energy will be generated at the same time!

We are going to enjoy our gains a little more this week. Talk to you soon!

Greetings, Marianne