The Den Helder–Texel ferry crosses one of the most ecologically rich, and most fragile, stretches of coastal water in northern Europe. Wadden Wildlife Trust is the independent foundation working to keep that crossing — and the seals, birds and mudflats it passes — healthy for the next generation.
Read our missionWadden Wildlife Trust runs three permanent programmes along the Texel–Den Helder corridor. Each one is independently audited, peer-reviewed and shared in the open with regional partners, including the ferry operator that crosses the channel every day.
Two flights a week between April and October count harbour and grey seal colonies on the sandbanks. Injured or orphaned animals are rehabilitated at our station near Pieterburen and released back into the channel.
The Den Helder–Texel ferry corridor is a flyway pinch point. Our ornithologists run year-round counts on Brent geese, oystercatchers, godwits and the spoon-billed sandpiper, sharing the raw data with EU partners.
Six fixed transects, monitored twice a year, track the health of the tidal flats and salt marshes. The data feeds into national restoration projects and into ferry route reviews that minimise disturbance.
Every passenger boarding the ferry between Den Helder and Texel travels across an international biosphere — a wetland of such ecological importance that UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage list in 2009.
The ferry corridor is the single most popular way for visitors to enter the Wadden region, which makes it both an extraordinary educational opportunity and a permanent test of the operator's environmental practices. Wadden Wildlife Trust works closely with the operator on emissions, wildlife observation guidelines, and low-impact mooring procedures.
The Wadden Sea is not a place you visit. It is a place you pass through, carefully, like a guest in someone else's living room.Dr Pauline Heesterbeek, founding trustee
The 2025 release season was the most successful in our two-decade history, with a 94 % survival rate at the 6-month follow-up tag.
Aggregated counts at sixteen observation points across the Wadden flyway, contributed to the European Bird Census Council database.
Volunteer beach-clean teams cleared the shorelines between Den Helder and the Texel coastline over 41 organised events.
Most of the work we do is funded by individual donors and small monthly memberships. A €5 monthly gift sustains one harbour-seal census flight per quarter. €25 covers a week of bird-count logistics during the spring migration.
If you'd like to support the trust, or to volunteer at one of the beach-clean events, please write to us — our contact page has all the details.
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