About 1,000 deer to be culled at controversial Dutch rewilding park

More than 3,000 deer, ponies and cattle died last winter at the Oostvaardersplassen reserve

A Dutch provincial council has authorised the mass culling of about 1,000 deer on a controversial nature reserve east of Amsterdam where more than 3,000 red deer, ponies and cattle died last winter, almost all of them shot by park rangers because they were starving.

A report by a special committee of Flevoland council this year demanded an immediate end to the rewilding principles on which the unique 15,000-acre Oostvaardersplassen reserve was run, which allowed "natural processes" to determine the herbivore population.