Bringing back rabbits to Newborough

I met up with Graham Williams, senior reserve manager for Natural Resources Wales, at Newborough Warren national nature reserve. Covering a thousand acres it’s the largest dune system in the country but whereas fifty years ago it was 60% bare sand, today it is covered in a dense mat of vegetation down to just 3% sand. You can hear Graham talking about the dunes on Country Focus which will be broadcast on Sunday 14th April and available on the iPlayer for the following week.

Why the vegetation? Warren is the clue - in the good old days there was a huge population of rabbits, trappers catching 15,000 in a year, but in 1953 myxomatosis almost wiped out the population with but a few these days. Thousands of rabbits are great dune managers, grazing the vegetation and burrowing to create piles of loose sand that get blown around to form dunes. Today Graham uses ponies for grazing but sadly they are no good at digging holes.

Increased nitrogen deposition and increased CO2 levels have contributed to the vegetation growth as has the succession of wet winters and summers; also wet sand can’t be blown around.

So what? Bare sand is the lifeblood of a mobile dune system which in turn provides extreme, hot and dry habitats for rare species such as mining bees, sand wasps, beetles, and plants like petalwort. Several of these species are on the brink of extinction so intervention is underway.

Rabbits have been re-introduced in the form of giant diggers and twenty-five-tonne dumper trucks which are stripping and moving the vegetation from a 3 to 4 acre section of the dunes. Hopefully this will create a safe haven for the endangered species and a platform from which dry sand can be blown to smother vegetation, create more bare sand and get the dunes back to my childhood memory of what they should be.

Rabbits seem to be the key but if the rabbits didn’t get here until the Romans, what would the dunes have looked like then?

What I love about blogging is the near immediate response you can get and I am grateful to Mike Howe for the comment below:

Much of the sand body of Newborough Warren post-dates the Roman occupation of Anglesey by about 1200 years. The text below is taken from: Pye & Blott (2012). CCW Science Report 1002.

The timing of the earliest sand invasion at Newborough has not been established. However, there is evidence to suggest that a major episode of aeolian sand incursion occurred in the 13th and early 14th centuries, when significant areas of cultivated land were abandoned (Ranwell, 1958, 1959, 1960a)

Natur Cymru autumn edition - out mid September

Artwork by Guy Manning

50 Years Ago – National Nature Reserves then and now – Mike Alexander. The legacy of the last five decades

A Living Wales? – Mick Green.

Will a new approach to conservation bring real benefits for wildlife?

A little bird told me – Merlin Evans. The perils of feeding the birds

Stackpole – A treasure trove for grassland and duneland fungi – David Harries. An island of fungal gems!

Sand dunes on the move – John Ratcliffe. The benefits of natural sand dune processes

The sand dunes of Pembrey Burrows – Simeon Jones. Recent restoration in Carmarthenshire

Seaweedy seascapes – Francis Bunker. A tour of underwater pastures

Hen lwybrau a ffyrdd porthmyn – Twm Elias. Allweddau i ddeall y tirlun

Inspired by Nature at Dinefwr – Natur Cymru writing competition winners

·     The Hawk moth effect – Chris Kinsey

·     How I fell in love with the frog lady – John Harold

Ynys Dewi – Ramsey Island: time to take stock – Lisa Morgan. Seabird populations and the rat eradication programme

Falling apples – painting a picture of Welsh orchards – Andrew Micah Green.

Findings of the Gwent Orchards Project survey

Discoveries in Science – Teresa Darbyshire. Marine collections supporting research in Wales

Islands round-up – Geoff Gibbs. Bardsey: diary of a visit in July

Green Bookshelf – Hywel Roberts, Annie Haycock

NATUR – Mike Alexander. News from the Welsh Institute of Countryside & Conservation Management

Water environment – Gareth Farr. Groundwater animals – the stygobites of Wales

Woods and forest – Chris Tucker. New Ancient Woodland Inventory is launched

Mobile dunes of Barmouth

Blown in from the Channel Isles?

Strong winds, stormy seas and Bermo’s seafront road was closed by an impromptu sand dune. As for the Jersey Lifeboat - I’m not sure how that ended up here.

I think the dunes at Bermo are a relatively recent phenomenon following construction works near the harbour. They are steadily moving up the coast, the natural, free and uninhibited way. Not locked down by plantations of marram grass or other human intervention.

Tourists might prefer to walk straight from their hotels onto the beach but the dunes provide a brilliant natural coastal defence.  By being mobile they can shift, grow and adapt as sea levels rise. We probably need to remobilise other dunes along the coast to regain this natural protection just as they did in Holland and Denmark.

Mobile dunes, which are now very scarce, also provide a dynamic environment favoured by a very specific range of plants and wildlife.