The Donkse Laagten is a small

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

nature reserve of roughly two square kilometres in the

Alblasserwaard The Alblasserwaard () is a polder in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is mainly known for the windmills of Kinderdijk, located near the village of Kinderdijk in the polder's northwestern part. History The first human inhabitan ...

in the province of

South Holland South Holland ( nl, Zuid-Holland ) is a province of the Netherlands with a population of over 3.7 million as of October 2021 and a population density of about , making it the country's most populous province and one of the world's most densely ...

. It is located in the municipality of

Molenlanden Molenlanden () is a municipality in the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. The municipality was created on 1 January 2019 by merging the municipalities of Giessenlanden en Molenwaard. It is located east of Rotterdam along the Lek (river) ...

, between the towns Streefkerk to the northwest and

Bleskensgraaf Bleskensgraaf is a town in the Dutch province of South Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Molenlanden, and lies about 10 km northeast of Dordrecht. It has an area of 1272 hectares. On 1 January 2009 Bleskensgraaf and Hofwegen had 279 ...

to the south. The area is governed by the organization

Staatsbosbeheer Staatsbosbeheer, founded in 1899, is a Dutch government organization for forestry and the management of nature reserves. Staatsbosbeheer currently oversees over 250,000 hectares of land in the Netherlands. Usually this land is open to the public ...

. There is no public transportation to the Donkse Laagten, but it is open for recreational use. The Donkse Laagten is mainly notable for three things: *It is a site of relative importance in bird conservation and protection. There are three duck decoys. *It is one of the roughly 40 sites in the Netherlands where it is legal to camp in the wild, as authorized by Staatsbosbeheer and several other organizations. *In 2002 and again in 2006 the area was in the national news for first sightings and later the capture of a

Common snapping turtle The common snapping turtle (''Chelydra serpentina'') is a species of large freshwater turtle in the family Chelydridae. Its natural range extends from southeastern Canada, southwest to the edge of the Rocky Mountains, as far east as Nova Scotia ...

, which is not native to the area and is considered somewhat dangerous. During the

2001 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth crisis The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom in 2001 caused a crisis in British agriculture and tourism. This epizootic saw 2,000 cases of the disease in farms across most of the British countryside. Over 6 million cows and ...

, which spread to the Netherlands, the area was one of the nature reserves to be closed in order to prevent danger to humans. Uffelen, Connie van (April 12, 2001).
MKZ beperkt de recreatie
. ''AD''. Retrieved July 31, 2008.

References

External links

Google Maps
The Donkse Laagten are directly north to Bleskensgraaf and west to the Donksweg

A collection of quoted news articles concerning the turtle incident.
Website about the Staatsbosbeheer project 'Paalkamperen'
The site contains more information on and pictures of the Donkse Laagten {{coord, 51.8884, 4.7845, type:landmark_source:enwiki-googlemaplink, display=title Nature reserves in the Netherlands Parks in South Holland Molenlanden