Yesterday afternoon, a small group of people, two horses and a dog hiked along the sandy path from the Manila Community Center across the rolling dunes to the ocean. When they reached the front line of dunes, where vegetation peters out and the beach slopes down to the coastline, two men began shoving and hammering wooden slats into the sand. Before long they had several dozen of the shims standing upright in the valley between two dunes. The planks looked like tiny frontier grave crucifixes waiting for their crossbeams. Before they left, they shoved more planks into the sand of an adjacent valley.
The group was attempting a bit of guerrilla dune restoration, using an unauthorized “bio-mimicry” technique they’d learned about online. The slats, the men explained, are supposed to mimic dune vegetation by catching wind-blown sand and allowing it to accumulate at their bases. Periodically, as the sand level rises, the slats must be lifted up a few inches. Before too long (a year or two, maybe) you’ve got a rebuilt dune. That’s the plan, anyway. But it’s not the official plan.
The management and restoration plan for these particular dunes belongs to the Manila Community Services District. Yesterday’s renegade beach engineers think the district has been doing it all wrong, and so they set out — without a coastal development permit — to try a new approach.
Here’s the briefest of backgrounds: The men, including Uri Driscoll, Bill Weigle, Dennis Mayo and Ray Reel, are avid horsemen and trail-access advocates who for years now have been at odds with various dune management/restoration agencies. (For more detail see Heidi Walters’ cover story from April 2011.) They argue that the 30-year, multi-agency campaign to remove European beach grass (Ammophila arenaria) is a fool’s errand that’s only serving to destabilize the dunes — wiping out their favorite horse trails in the process. They hope that their experiment, which they planned to announce today before the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, will reopen a debate on best practices — a debate, in their opinion, that they and their ilk have been systematically left out of.
Reached earlier today for comment on these unsanctioned activities, Friends of the Dunes Executive Director Carol Vander Meer said that the biology and ecology of our local dune ecosystem is unique — different than the Oregon coast and very different than Cape Cod, where the wood-slat approach is currently being used. “I would use extreme caution thinking we can apply techniques from other areas,” Vander Meer said.
As she stated in her May 21 “My Word” piece for the Times-Standard, Vander Meer said that dunes are naturally mobile and dynamic, so she’d be curious to see the experiment sites, which the experimenters described as “blow-outs.” She added that her organization and others in the Humboldt Dunes Cooperative work with scientists and other experts, and while she’s skeptical about the wood-slat technique, she won’t rule it out. ”I think we’re always open to new knowledge, facts and information.”
The manager of the Manila Community Services District was not available for comment.
This article appears in Humboldt, The Book.
This is not how to go about dune restoration. Whether you’re pro dune or against, pro horses or against, freestyle dune restoration has the potential to vastly impact lands that are owned by the public, not to mention that it can encourage others to take their own thoughts and ideas and put them into action. While the process may be convoluted, there is a REASON that you need a permit to do these things. Just as a pro horse advocate wouldn’t want random citizens to start messing with their trails, or how concerned ecologists wouldn’t want someone intentionally planting invasive species, this is an example of the wrong approach to wanting to try new ideas. And yes, a CDP may be challenging to get, but how about partnering with one of the dune organizations or HSU to run trials?
I LOVE LAMP
On the east coast they are spending billions to secure there coastal resources which includes planting ammophila. Here we are using school children and prisoners to remove ours. What is with the disconnect?
Funny Dave should mention permits. There is absolutely no clause in the permits currently being used that says FOD, MCSD or anyone can reduce the topography of the dunes. Had they done the REQUIRED monitoring we may have caught this blowout sooner. If these agencies are not willing to abide by the permits why do we give them to them.
If they want to reduce these dunes and the coastal protection they provide then maybe they need to reapply for new permits.
The repair we are employing attempts to fix what was not supposed to be broken. It is a simple and effective approach that rebuilds the original topography. Hopefully. The European beach grass is the only vegetation that will maintain the height that is required.
I realize it is one of those inconvenient truths but hey we had to learn how to do stream restoration right after some serious mistakes.
Hey! Free kindling! Sweet! Thanks, Wilford Brimley on horseback!