Welcome to the Summer 2021 edition of the Sands of LIFE newsletter that aims to keep you updated on all that’s happened around the project over the past few months. 

The first-ever World Sand Dune Day took place on 25 June with a busy week of events taking place across Wales in the run-up to this inaugural celebration.

We joined Dynamic Dunescapes for a beach art session down in Port Talbot on the Tuesday. We then moved north and held a sand dune mindfulness session at Morfa Harlech on the Wednesday where we explored the need to reconnect with the natural world and experience its richness.

Then on the Thursday we linked up with friends from Keep Wales Tidy for a litter-pick and conservation session at Newborough. Whilst on the Friday, we were part of an event at Kenfig with a yoga session and dune wildlife guided walk also held at Morfa Harlech.

We also appeared live on both BBC Radio Cymru and BBC Radio Wales from Morfa Harlech on the Friday morning to share the celebration with their listeners.

We would like to thank everyone who helped make the first-ever World Sand Dune Day a successful one and we can’t wait to celebrate all over again in 2022.

As part of the upcoming autumn and winter program of works we will be thinning and felling some of the conifers within the plantations at Whiteford Burrows and Morfa Harlech.

The Sands of LIFE team will be carrying out engagement with the local community to provide information about the plans and give the opportunity to raise comments and questions.

Did you know that conifers aren’t native to our sand dunes? They were planted in the past for timber and to stabilise the once moving dunes. Conifers, however, shade out and overwhelm native species and dry out naturally wet areas.

The conifers are reaching the end of their commercial life and will start to decline and blow over if not harvested. Their removal will also help to restore the sand dunes by creating open areas of flower-rich dune grassland habitat that some of our rarest wildlife depends upon.

Please keep an eye on our social media for further updates.

Our important conservation work to keep the dunes healthy will soon be restarting across Wales.

We will be completing some fencing at Newborough Warren, and at Hendai in the forest. We will be extending our mowing and scrub removal works too, to provide a further boost to the rare dune species found at this wonderful site.

We will be removing invasive alien species at Tywyn Aberffraw. If these aren’t controlled, they might take over large areas of the dunes and cause rare dune wildlife to suffer. This will be a follow-on from the winter work we completed on site.

A lot of important work is due to start towards late summer at Merthyr Mawr. There will be a total of 15 turf strips – whereby crucial bare sand habitat is recreated. We are also currently planning to create one notch in the front of the dunes and to scrape further areas.

Over at Pembrey Burrows we will be controlling the invasive sea buckthorn. Despite its vibrant flash of colour this thorny species is non-native to our sand dunes and takes over the precious space native plants require to survive.

Whilst at Laugharne-Pendine Burrows we will be completing 3km of fencing to help protect the cattle who graze the dunes. We will also be mowing at Whiteford Burrows, Merthyr Mawr and Kenfig to help keep the vegetation short.

Did you know that Kenfig is one of the last remnants of a huge dune system that once stretched along the coastline of south Wales from the Ogmore River to the Gower peninsular?

This is also one of the crucial sites covered by our project. We have already been busy here over the last couple of years, whilst further work is currently approaching too.

Over the coming summer and autumn months we will be scraping an area of dune slack to recreate bare sand habitat that is being lost from Wales’ sand dunes at an alarming rate. We will also be removing scrub that is threatening to take over areas of the dunes and encouraging sustainable grazing by cattle by fitting 5km of fencing. New kissing gates will provide good access to the public.

Our Sands of LIFE project information panel is now on show at Kenfig. This now sees eight of the 10 sites covered by the project with project information panels installed.

We recently joined up with reserve staff and volunteers at Kenfig to survey the population of the rare fen orchid and then attended the Kenfig Open Day in early July – big thanks to the reserve’s staff for making the day such a success.

We look forward to being part of future events to help showcase the site’s outstanding natural beauty and importance to rare dune wildlife.

Head over to our website for all the latest news about the project and information on results and findings. Or why not follow us on social media? Our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter feeds are updated regularly, providing sneak peaks of the weekly progress, outstanding dune related photos and short interview snippets.

Email: SoLIFE@cyfoethnaturiolcymru.gov.uk

Website: naturalresources.wales/SandsofLIFE

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter: @TwyniByw