arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Maybe a word about Belgium and forests. Belgium is split in two parts. The Flemish part (in the north) and the French part (in the south). None of the parts have wilderness , but the south part contains a lot more nature and forest. Bruges is in West-Flanders what once was a land of forests and moors is now a land of agriculture, industry , roads and houses.(By the way Belgium has the most dense road network of the world!) Anyway, it's very important that we take care of what is left!
The Forest
The Lappersfort is situated south of Bruges, by the canal to Ghent. There's little known about the history because a fire in the place where they kept the archives destroyed a lot of information after the second world war.
What we do know is that is was used for storage for munitions between the big wars by FN (arms factory). Now it is 'owned' by Fabricom , a big enterprise in the steel industry , who wants to sell it. Through years of absence of human activity , the forest had started to become wild again. It contains 7 different biotopes and because it is next to the canal, many birds use it as a place to rest during their journey. There is also a swamp where a lot of birds breed. There are 3 different kinds of owls, robins, tits, woodpeckers . There are a lot of squirrels and bats and a huge amount of midges! Old trees are quite common, there are a lot of oaks, chestnut trees and beeches. There are also a lot of poplars ,mainly in the swamp that were planted to dry up the area (so the ground could be better used for building) , but they are falling down one by one so the swamp is recovering. The forest is 24 Ha big.

The Plans
The problem is that only a small part of the forest has been reserved for nature. A bigger part is reserved for big and small industry. And actually the forest is threatened by 3 different projects which makes it harder to fight...
- The Road
The city wanted to build a road to make a connection between the motorway and the ring around Bruges . Actually more between the motorway and the station , where they want to build a big cinema. Through the publicity of our actions and camp , they have minored down this project and now they only want to widen the street that is now a little street for local traffic, but still it would take a part of the forest and have a negative effect on nature.
- The Place for coaches
On the place where a munitions factory was burned down many years ago and where nature has restored itself, the city council wants to build a parking space for the public transport company. They say that the current parking space is inefficient. We believe that the sacrifice of the young trees would not only be too big , but the noise and pollution of the busses would also have devastating effect on the rest of the forest.
- Industry
The biggest part of the swamp has been reserved for small industry. The city now says that, if the road is build , they want to negotiate with the owner to change the destination. (The city council feels the pressure and is scared for their image). We fear that, if these negotiations take place, a compromise will be made and that the most beautiful part of the swamp will be turned into a parking space. If all these plans are realized only a quarter of the whole site would be maintained !

About our Action & it's history
Having an action-camp is one of the most effective ways to protect a forest. Because you're actually protecting it by your presence. That's why we're doing it...
Since we were to start Belgium's first action-camp we had to learn a lot of things, on legal issues as well as on practical ones. A week after the beginning of the occupation we informed the press , the police and the owner. Especially the local press was interested , national didn't really seem to care. The police came after a week to inform us that we were doing an illegal action . It is legally impossible to forbid them to come on site , but they do need a warrant to come in any tent , hut ... Now they only come by when a person disappears in the surroundings of 70 miles. The city council declared that our action was too early as their plans were only in the preparatory stage. The owner was quite friendly in the beginning. Even when the police asked permission to evict us because they believed that the forest was to become a base for violent protesters at the anti-globalisation-demo in September, they said no, because they wanted to negotiate with us . The negotiations didn't happen (because they soon found out that we were fighting to protect the whole area and they asked us to leave the area.
Soon after publications came out people started coming by, many people of Bruges set their first step in the, for them, unknown forest and were amazed by it's beauty. But also people from other regions came to visit and help us . A lot of Dutch activists helped building tree houses and repairing the old house. A crew from the 'nine ladies protest site' built a tower on the house. people came by with food , building material, climbing material, etc.
In the beginning we had a meeting every night (called fire moment). But during the 8 months of occupation this minored down, now we have a meeting once a week. The winter came and things grew a bit silent around the camp. But we noticed that silence is a thing you make yourself and we organised a neighbourhood meeting , with speakers, a slideshow, vegan pancakes and it became a success. At the time of this writing (April 2002) there is a lot of press attention . Last week we held a press conference together with some more conservationist organisations , because we wanted to make publicity for another place that is threatened by industry. We said that we were at the 250th day of our occupation, and after one national paper picked that up, other national press soon followed. Suddenly we were giving interviews for the seven o'clock news , getting the front page of a French paper , having a documentary and being invited for a discussion with the mayor on a political program on national telly.
But if we learned one thing on this camp it is about the hypocrisy of the press , because most are just interested in lifestyle matters (skipping) and not in the nature that has to be destroyed. But we didn't get any negative press so far...

How to get there?
Standing with your back to the main entrance of the railway-station of Bruges, you turn right and just before the high bridge, you turn right again (Vaartdijkstraat). You follow the canal and pass some industry, follow it some more and you see a path with willows. You follow this into the forest where you'll soon meet some pixies. See ya' there?