Zoöp Observations: Sunbathing LawnZoöp Observations: Sunbathing Lawn

In the last week of December, the storage site for building materials on the corner of Jongkindstraat and Museumpark was finally cleared. What a relief! While the New Garden and the surrounding streets had already been completed for months, there was still that eyesore of a storage site. What bothered me most was that the site had obviously fallen into disuse for quite some time. The shed on the site stood empty, apart from some road plates no building materials were stored there. Within the surrounding fence litter started piling up.

Soon after the storage site was cleared by the contractor, a landscaping company arrived. The site was smoothed into a gentle slope and turfs were unrolled over it. To prevent the fresh lawn from being trampled, a temporary fence of wooden posts, connected to each other with a steel wire, was placed aroud it.

I took the liberty of consulting the plans and renders from 2016 to see what the raison d'être is for this lawn within the new Museumpark. 'Sunbathing lawn' I read. One of the artist impressions shows several human figures sunbathing and sitting on this small patch of green. Someone at Gustafson Porter + Bowman, the English landscape architecture firm responsible for the master plan, must have thought that the banks of a large pond simply needed a recreational lawn for visitors and Rotterdam residents.

It's common knowledge that it's always summer in these renders. It's also known that landscape architects are preoccupied with human concerns to the detriment of the needs of animals. Which is also the case here. Before the turfs had a chance to root, Egyptian geese settled on the new lawn to feast on the grass. An adult Egyptian goose eats about 200 to 300 grams of grass (dry matter) per day. Assuming that grass contains about 15 to 20% dry matter, this means that an Egyptian goose consumes 1 to 2 kilos of fresh grass per day. Not all of it is digested. Unfortunately, that is made clearly visible on the lawn. In short: a sunbathing area for humans right next to the pond hasn't a chance as long as the Museum Park is inhabited by hungry, defecating Egyptian geese.