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Shifting sands
Britain’s rare coastal flora vanishing as our dunes stop moving.
August 24 2011
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Fen orchid © David Carrington
A pioneering three-year project by Plantlife is being launched this summer in an attempt to halt the devastating loss of the exceptional coastal flora that makes them so special.
Britain has already lost pear fruited bryum, long-leaved thread moss and cernuous bryum, which are all now extinct.
Andy Byfield, Plantlife’s Landscape Conservation Manager who is leading the project, visited Kenfig Burrows in south Wales recently, a site of European importance. “I’ve just found some fen orchids, which I’m delighted about. In the 1980s, seven sites around the Bristol channel supported perhaps as many as 100,000 orchids but today, this has declined to a single site of only about 400 plants, which shows why this project is so critical. This project, generously funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, is not about re-establishing moving dune systems within the wider landscape but aims to demonstrate how and why things need to be done differently to help these special species at our trial sites.”
Sand dunes are complex, unstable systems that are naturally mobile, supporting a specialist flora that prefers the bare, calcium-rich sand. Over the centuries, however, we have artificially and naturally stabilised Britain’s dunes with a devastating effect on our biodiversity. Plantlife will be working initially at Kenfig Burrows in south Wales, in partnership with Bridgend County Borough Council and the Countryside Council for Wales, and hopes to extend the project’s influence to other sites around the Bristol Channel.
Why Kenfig Burrows is so important:
- One of the last remnants of huge dune systems that once stretched along the coast of Swansea Bay.
- It supports a variety of plants and fungi in the dunes, saltmarsh, swamp woodland and scrub, including 100% of the UK population of the dune variant of fen orchid.
- Only 2% of the dune system at Kenfig now comprises bare sand, down from around 40% in the mid 1940s. Early plant colonists including sea rocket, sea holly and yellow horned-poppy need bare sand to colonise – and these suffer if a dune system becomes too stable.
How we will be making a difference:
- Regular ground disturbance and open patches of sand will reduce the dominance of vigorous plant species and allow rarer, less vigorous species to return. As well as fen orchid, other declining species which will benefit include round leaved-wintergreen, marsh helleborine and early marsh orchid.
- Plantlife will be introducing trial management work aimed at encouraging fen orchid and allowing better conditions for many other species including the rare dune bryums and petalwort to develop.
- Additional funding from Pond Conservation’s Million Ponds Project (with funding from Biffaward) and Environment Wales will pay for practical management work to create temporary ponds and open up areas of sand dune, allowing plants to colonise the bare sand.
To find out more about how the Coastal Dunes Project will work or for images, please contact:
Sue Nottingham Senior Press Officer 01722 342757 / 0786 1655438 / .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Andy Byfield Landscape Conservation Manager 01752 830577 / 07816 945650 / .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).