Tinsel to tidewall: discarded Christmas trees reused to protect Lancashire coastline | Coastlines

Britain’s fight against climate collapse can often look like wind farms or solar power. But along Lancashire’s miles of coastline, the frontline is more festive.

Tens of thousands of discarded Christmas trees have been partially buried on beaches south of Blackpool as a bulwark against rising sea levels.

Hundreds of volunteers move tinsel-free trees into shallow holes in a bitter February wind and let nature do its thing. Over weeks, sometimes even days, they transform into sand dunes to protect beach houses.

It may sound like a strange festive tradition, but environmentalists say their work is becoming increasingly vital: since the mid-1800s the Lancashire coast is believed to have lost 80% of its dunes due to the rapid growth of seaside towns such as Blackpool and Lytham St Annes.

Amy Pennington, of the Lancashire Wildlife Trust, which is running the dunes project with funding from the Environment Agency, said: “The dunes used to extend for miles inland, but as we colonized and built the towns, they are now a thinner patch than they used to be.”

“These are important because this is the only sea defense the local community has.”

Volunteers began burying Christmas trees on these beaches more than three decades ago – Guardian photographer Christopher Thomond first captured the effort in 1994 – but the project has accelerated as sea levels have risen in the last decade.

United Kingdom estimated Since 1900, it has lost approximately 30% of its dunes and sea levels have risen approximately 19.5 cm. Two-thirds of this increase has occurred in the last 30 years. last workThis is higher than the world average.

Pennington said the increase in storm surge has accelerated the loss of the dunes, potentially exposing coastal homes to flooding: “We noticed that during storm surges the tide pushes the beach much higher, so the dunes are washed out more regularly.”

In addition to being a natural climate boundary, they are also a vital habitat for wildlife.

Nestled among the vast Christmas tree dunes at Lytham St Annes is one of the UK’s rarest reptiles.

Hundreds of sand lizards, not seen in the area for nearly 60 years, were released into the dunes in 2020, and conservationists say they are beginning to thrive.

“We’ve been spotting more every year and seeing large numbers of young, which means they’re breeding in the dunes,” said Andy Singleton-Mills, Fylde council’s regional conservation manager.

But day trippers hoping to see one of the striped green and brown reptiles may be disappointed, he said. They run a mile away from humans, which means tracking them is like “looking for a needle in a haystack.”

Last week 650 volunteers set to work on Lytham beach in full view of Blackpool’s big digger, burying nearly 2,000 Christmas trees donated from across Lancashire.

Except for the odd plastic tree and the occasional trinket, they sit along a two-mile stretch of beach, adorned with tufts of marran grass, whose roots can extend up to 100 meters and help hold them in place.

The new dunes, which can grow to about 3 meters (10 ft) high, should withstand the elements “hopefully indefinitely,” Pennington said.

But he said as sea levels rise they will have to start building the dunes upwards, rather than towards the Irish sea, within the next five years. “Eventually, we’ll get to a point where we’re regularly paying off what we’re doing, so they’ll be swept away. But that doesn’t mean we have to stop building them; we’ll just start building them.”

For some, sand dunes can be an annoying obstacle to reaching the beach. For others, they are places where windy hide-and-seek games are played.

Artist Holly Moeller, who painted Lytham dunes in watercolour, said people were “in danger of taking them for granted”.

“The dunes may seem quite sparse and bare, but they are such a spectacular habitat that there is so much going on that you may not see at first glance,” he said.

“In difficult moments in my life when I’m struggling with my mental health, there’s something big enough to hold it in the beach and the dunes. It’s a place I can come to for solace.”