At the end of the last Ice Age - about 10 000 years ago - an expansive area of peat bogs covered a big piece of the provinces of Drenthe, Friesland and even a piece of Germany. From the late Middle Ages of, the peat was excavated and transported with ships to the cities in the western part of the Netherlands and was used as heating on a small scale. Large-scale land clearance for agriculture between 1600 and 1900 fundamentally changed the character of the region.

The rugged peat moor of Fochteloërveen (3.000 ha) and a few smaller cores was all that was left. The peat degraded and turned into earth after the peat bog was drained for tree-planting and farming. Like all Dutch peat areas the quality of the habitats, especially of active raised bog, was impoverished severely during the last decades. Now the raised bog area is one of the few bogs in the Netherlands where living peat can be found and it is even growing again.

Since 1999 the hydrological conditions of the most species rich peat area of the peat bog were improved by an ingenious system of dams. It was a great surprise that, starting in 2001, cranes were breeding in this area. They were the first breeding cranes in the Netherlands since the 18th century. Nowadays also the number of non-breeding cranes in summer is increasing.

The nature reserve has a couple of walking and cycling paths and a lookout tower with breathtaking views over the area. It is owned and managed by Natuurmonumenten, a Dutch society for nature conservation.