Kobe Van Looveren
Regional Landscape Riverland
Identity
Riverland is the water-rich region in the southwest of the province of Antwerp. The rivers Rupel, Dijle, Nete, Schelde and Zenne are some kind of blue wires who determine our landscape. Nowhere else in Flanders/ or even Europe are so many rivers who come together, in such a relatively small area. The freshwater tidal action also ensures a unique fauna and flora such as the one we can admire here in Blaasveld Broek.
Action Radius
Our working area consists of 12 towns and 2 cities. You see the rivers. The smaller streams are not on this map, but they are presented all over our region.
Mission
Our mission is to improve the value of our landscape and to increase local support. We cooperate with governments (such as het ANB), environmental associations (such as Natuurpunt), agricultural organizations, hunting organizations and tourism associations, in short, everyone who is active around nature and landscape.
Activities
We encourage our partners to invest in nature and landscape and become stakeholders. In every town of our working area you can find a lot of our realizations: from landscaping projects, agricultural agreements, to the investment of sustainable green infrastructures like pools, hedges, tree rows and wood sides. Besides the field work we also organize a lot of educational and recreational projects. We also bring the historical dimension of our landscape back to life by restoration and preservation of small historical heritage, storytelling and education. I suppose these images say more than moderate translated words in English? So I’ll just show you some pictures in the next slide.
Example cases Poel d’elzen & Scheyvaertshof
A couple years ago Poel d’Elzen was a Neglected piece of nature with a smelly ditch. Together with the gemeente Nijlen and Natuurpunt de Wielewaal we joined our forces (field work) to rebuild this area in a natural oasis full of life (stakeholder investment).
To create local support we have organized a public activity where we’ve also invited the residents. They had the opportunity to study wateranimals, join a guided walk and enjoy the self-made snacks and drinks made of waterplants and local herbs. Result everybody happy, informed and proud!
To promote our regional identity and encourage everybody to discover our beautiful landscapes we permanently invest in a network of marked trails and nature experiences in the immediate living and working environment. These pictures were taken nearby Scheyvaertshof, where we are now, and are the result of a cooperation with ANB, Toerisme Vlaanderen and the town Willebroek.