The St. Anne’s Sand Dunes will be featured on the long-running BBC1 Countryfile programme today (Sunday 10th April) at 5.50 p.m. as the popular environment show focuses on how our region is dealing with coastal erosion. The programme will feature presenter Tom Heap speaking to Lancashire Wildlife Trust’s dunes project officer Amy Pennington and volunteers as they plant marram grass on the dunes.
Over the last 150 years, much of our sand dune landscape has been lost. Today 80 hectares remain. For the past nine years, The Wildlife Trust, Blackpool Council and Fylde Council have been implementing their Sand Dune Management Plan. The partnership recently received £999,000 from the Environment Agency to continue the work for a further five years.
Their initiatives have included annual planting of discarded Christmas trees on the beach at St Anne’s to protect the dunes and help keep wind-blown sand at bay and the project to return sand lizards to the dunes.
Lancashire Wildlife Trust Conservation Officer Kim Wisdom said, ‘Over the past nine years there has been significant improvement to the structure of the dunes, which protect wildlife and the homes of people living nearby. Only last year, we saw the completion of a joint project to return sand lizards to the dunes.’ You can find out more on BBC1’s Countryfile at 5.50 today (10.04.2022), when Tom Heap speaks to Fylde Sand Dunes Officer, Amy Pennington, about the continuing work which is ongoing to stabilise and expand the sand dunes on our coastline.
The featured photo shows BBC Countryfile presenter Tom Heap with Lancashire Wildlife Trust officers and volunteers on the beach at St Anne’s.
The photograph below shows Countryfile presenter Tom Heap with Lancashire Wildlife Trust’s dunes project officer Amy Pennington at the dunes.
