Heavy machinery moves in to aid dune clearance
John works for Green Sefton, the Sefton Council service that brings together the coast & countryside, parks & green spaces, flooding & coastal erosion, risk management and grounds maintenance teams for a joined-up approach to the vital management, development and oversight of Sefton’s beautiful coastline, parks and green spaces. This column looks at the flora, fauna and history of the coastline, and the work carried out to protect it.
WINTER works continue in the dunes after the festive break, with heavy machinery being used to clear more areas of encroaching scrub.
Currently contractors are in the area immediately south of Ainsdale Discovery Centre, a large, level site which hosts Slack 170.
Like giant mechanical ice skaters, they dance a machine ballet over frozen and flooded areas to tackle the scrub.
This is one of the biggest low-lying areas which flood on the coast in wet winters like the current 2023/24 season.
At the moment it appears as one vast lake, fringed with a reedbed in the north and hemmed in by low dunes on all sides.
But as is often case on the Sefton Coast, appearances can be deceptive – when natural evaporation accelerates in the spring and the waters recede, Slack 170 is revealed as an unusually flat plain in a dune system where pools and “slacks” are often pocket-sized areas.
The site’s scale and shape is not entirely natural – sand was removed here, as it was at a number of places on the coast in the early 20th century.
Over 200 acres of duneland, mainly around Formby were levelled by asparagus farmers as they grew their precious crop over a 100-year period, but other areas also saw sand extraction continuing into the 1950s and beyond, which lead to concerns about marine flooding.
The response from the local authority was to confirm a 1958 Coast Protection Order under the Coast Protection Act of 1949.
This effectively stopped most further extraction from the dunes at Formby although sand extraction continued on the coast, first at Ainsdale, and then on the Ribble estuary at Southport, until the early 2000s.
Areas of duneland, like the Slack 170 area, were sites of sand extraction, before protections were put on the valuable duneland habitat, and so some larger flatter areas were created.
Once the area was very attractive to Natterjack Toads, but in recent years the spread of invasive scrub, and a changing climate has meant that the species has had no success there in recent years.
Hopefully work to remove the scrub around the edges of this area will create a better habitat for the Natterjacks this year – with high winter water levels falling the site could be suitable for them by the time they emerge in the spring.
Much of the site’s rare flora, lost beneath the encroaching scrub, may reappear from the historic seedbank too.
Visitors can help our rare toads, amphibians and other species by keeping dogs well away from water in the dunes.
There are many flooded slacks this winter, so if you are a regular dog walker, now is a good time to replan your route for the spring, when the toads clamber out of hibernation burrows and signage alerting visitors to their presence starts to appear on site.
We all have a responsibility to look after this precious habitat and its wildlife if future generations are to continue to enjoy it.