3,000 Christmas trees planted in the sand dunes

Blackpool Gazette

Over 3,000 Christmas trees were planted in the sand at St Annes during a two-day annual event.  Amy Pennington explains how this helps protect coastal towns from flooding, and why the Fylde coast is so unique.

Transcript

00:00 So we're here to bury Christmas trees. So every year we get recycled Christmas trees donated by local residents

00:07 and lots of people come together to put the Christmas trees in which acts as a great way of

00:12 acting as a coastal defence. You have to get the tides have to be exactly right

00:17 so you have to do it in a time where the low tide coincides with smack bang in the middle of the day to give

00:22 us the most amount of

00:23 opportunity to put the trees in. So we're only here for two days and we've got more trees than ever before so we've got

00:28 3,000 trees to put in over two days, but we've got lots of hard-working volunteers

00:32 so they're certainly up to the task. So the Christmas trees act to build embryo dunes

00:37 so we bury them in at an angle which means that when the wind blows it slows the wind velocity down in amongst the branches of

00:43 the Christmas trees and it deposits the sand in and around the sand dunes and so we can help to build them up.

00:49 So the sand dunes act as a buffer between the land and the sea which means that with climate change and storm surges

00:55 it just makes this area more protected.

00:57 So before we actually took over as a project in this area there was no sand dunes here

01:02 so over the past 10 to 15 years the management techniques that we've used as a project has meant that we've grown the sand dunes out

01:08 by 90 metres. So it's 90 metres of improved coastal defence for the local town

01:13 but it's also 90 metres of improved coastal habitat as well for the specialised wildlife that lives in this area.

01:26 There's many other places around the UK that have used Christmas trees. We're certainly not the first project to start it

01:31 although I think we are one of the longest standing now.

01:33 But you have to have the right environmental conditions.

01:37 So in some areas, well many areas around the UK really, there are road and coastlines

01:42 but we're quite unique on the Fylde Coast in that we're actually regularly accreting sand

01:46 so we're in a net profit of sand which means that we have this little window of

01:49 opportunity to be able to build the sand dunes up and nobody knows how long that's going to last for so it's really important

01:55 that we act now to make the dunes wider and therefore more efficient as a soft sea defence while we've got the opportunity to do so.

02:02 You have to have sand availability, you have to have the space on the foreshore, you have to have the right particle size of sand

02:10 so it's all very scientific. Some areas it'll work and some areas it won't and we're very lucky that it works here.

02:15 And just tell me how people can get involved if they want to for the Fylde Sand Dunes Project?

02:24 So there's lots of different ways that people can get involved. So we have regular work parties where we do practical conservation

02:31 so we can take out invasive species or dig dune slacks or plant marram grasses which helps to bind all the sand particles together.

02:38 So there's loads of different practical opportunities to get involved in.

02:41 We also run lots of different types of events, people can come along to our events and we do education as well and talks.

02:48 We also have guided walks that people can join in on and all that information is available on Lancashire Wildlife Trust's website.

02:55 [wind]

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