Qualla: Hoge Kempen National Park

Hoge Kempen National Park: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Willy Leenders, Public domain. Belgium has exactly one national park, and it is built on top of a closed coal mine. Hoge Kempen opened on Sunday 29 March 2006 in the eastern corner of Belgian Limburg, sixty-seven square kilometres of heathland, pine forest, sandy dunes and old gravel pits stitched together with eco-ducts over a motorway. The Goldman Environmental Prize - sometimes called the Green Nobel - went in 2008 to the project manager who put it together, Ignace Schops, for the unusual idea that a densely populated industrial region might decide what came after industry, instead of letting industry's leftovers decide for it.

Image: Willy Leenders | Public domain

Hoge Kempen National Park: After the Pits

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sonuwe, CC BY-SA 3.0. The country east of Genk used to be the heart of the Belgian Limburg coalfield. When the pits closed in the late twentieth century they left what closed pits always leave: spoil heaps, abandoned shafts, gravel quarries flooded into mirror-blue lakes, sand pits dug for the white s...

Image: Sonuwe | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hoge Kempen National Park: The Step on the Plateau

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting) and NordNordWest, CC BY-SA 3.0. The geography here is older than coal. During the last ice age the Meuse - the Maas, in Dutch - dropped rocks scoured from the Ardennes across this corner of Limburg, and sea winds blew sand over them, building what geologists call the Kempens Plateau. The Grensmaas, the border M...

Image: Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting) and NordNordWest | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hoge Kempen National Park: Heather, Frogs and Smooth Snakes

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hermans, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walk into Mechelse Heide on a late August afternoon and the whole horizon turns purple. Bell heather, ling, gorse in bright yellow patches, juniper bushes black against the sand. The list of resident species reads like a field guide to species that have lost ground almost everywh...

Image: Paul Hermans | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hoge Kempen National Park: Six Gates, One Cycle Network

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hermans, CC BY-SA 4.0. There is no single entrance to Hoge Kempen. Each of the six municipalities that share the park has its own gate, themed to a local story. Connecterra at the Maasmechelen-Dilsen-Stokkem border is the main gate. Kattevennen in Genk has a Cosmodrome and takes the cosmos as its theme...

Image: Paul Hermans | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hoge Kempen National Park: A Green Nobel and a Quiet Idea

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hermans, CC BY 4.0. In April 2008 Ignace Schops flew to San Francisco to accept the Goldman Environmental Prize. The citation singled out the unusual approach: not setting nature aside from people, but weaving it through agriculture, tourism, economy and existing settlement. A month later he was hon...

Image: Paul Hermans | CC BY 4.0