Networking nature,or serengeti behind the dikes

Nowadays, wildlife has no chance to be conserved and maintained without the helping hand of man. Ambitious plans to adopt an offensive rather than defensive approach to conservation by creating ‘new nature’ led to initiatives to build ecological networks, from the local, through the regional and the national to the European level. Nature policy in the Netherlands aims to realize a National Ecological Network that is linked up with a projected Pan‐European Ecological Network. This article also discusses the social conflicts engendered by this policy and the ambivalent cultural reactions to which the deliberate ‘production’ of nature gives rise.