Lowland heathlands dominated by Calluna vulgaris are a characteristic ecosystem of the sandy soils of Northwestern Europe. Many of these heathlands have been converted to agricultural lands in the 20th century, but because increasing recognition of their nature conservation value has led to an increase in restoration efforts. Since about 2005, several experiments were carried out in a number of former agricultural areas in the Netherlands with the aim of accelerating the succession in vegetation and surface-dwelling fauna towards heathland. We discuss two projects in which the monitoring of the beetle fauna using pitfall traps was carried out. In the new reserve "Reijerscamp", situated in the Central Netherlands, a 10-year monitoring project was carried out in an abandoned sandy field area of ca 200 ha from 2006-2015. The area consisted of a former grain field and a grass seed nursery, with small wooded areas here and there and the aim is to enlarge the area of dry heathland. In 2006, at four 5-10 ha locations, a few hundred meters apart, the nutrient-rich topsoil layer was removed, and the Pleistocene sand exposed. On a part of each of these sites, heather cuttings were deposited to accelerate the formation of dry heathland. The study consisted of five sampling years spread over the entire study period. In each sampling year, 15-25 series of 5 pitfalls were used to sample the reserve during the period April – October, on the untreated, former agricultural parts and on the four parts with removed top soil, both on the bare sand and on the parts with heather deposition. The results for ground beetles, did not support the hypothesis in all respects. From the results, it became clear that creating environmental heterogeneity, generally contributes to the ground beetle diversity in the reserve. However, the period of ten years was too short to show a clear indication that the faunal succession is moving towards a heathland fauna. The first years showed an interesting fauna with a lot of stenotopic, rare and ...