It has taken over a year of planning, fundraising, connecting with other organisations and similar projects, gathering and reading background material, disseminating information to raise public awareness, writing articles, organising information sharing events and simply thinking about our Dune Restoration project. It is with a great feeling of relief and pride that on Wednesday 20th November we finally finished the first phase – converting 0.8ha of dense gorse back to open sand dunes.
So what does it take to do this work, where we are restoring important habitat which has been disappearing over the decades due to encroaching gorse and trees – for some rare, small, delicate creatures? The work on the ground has taken two mighty big machines that arrived and were off loaded one evening next to Woodside in the Park Ecovillage Findhorn to initially reduce the gorse to a mulch. It took the machines two long days to clear the majority of the area of the 3m+ high impenetrable gorse. The underlying undulating topography of the land has been revealed including the top of one of the high dunes with fabulous distant views.
Gary and Damian from Northern Contracting Solutions, based locally in Auldern, were meticulous operators of their machines, really interested in the project and great people to work with. This was particularly important as the next phase involved removing all the gorse roots, scraping them off with all the organic matter and piling this material up into great heaps. This was essential as if left the created area would simply revert back to gorse in a year or two as it is surrounded by a prolific sea of gorse with a huge potential seed source.. The whole idea behind the project is to create a reset in the landscape with the open sand areas taken back to the first stages of biological succession which will in time create habitat for the rarer species to survive and hopefully thrive.
Once the organic matter was piled up it was then necessary to create gigantic holes – over twenty of them – 5m+ deep – and in most cases over 8m by 8m in dimension. We got to see the underlying structure of the sand and in some cases layers of organic soil as these holes were created. Any organic material and very stoney material had to be kept aside and was returned to these holes with the gorse heaps.
The last phase was to spread the dug out sand over the area covering the holes with at least half a metre of that material. We wanted as much as possible to retain the original topography of the land so again this phase had to be completed with much thought and care.
Within a few days James Bunyan, an ecologist living on the Black Isle who is particularly interested in using drones and cutting edge techniques to record ecological change, arrived and took images of the project area to compare with those taken earlier in the year to give a baseline for monitoring any change. More about his work will be shared in the next newsletter but here are some of the remarkable images he captured first giving an overview of the area and then a flyover so you can see what has been created. His work will be particularly important in documenting the movement of sand and the slow recolonising of the area which is likely to take decades..
Thanks goes to many people including those in our community and beyond that helped fund this project, first with the Go Fund Me appeal last Christmas time and then through the Big Give Green Match Fund around last Easter with further financial help granted by Fabio /TSI Moray through the Climate Action Fund and our Hygeia charity friends in the USA. The project has been held jointly between myself and ecologist Sean Reed who did much of the meticulous project planning and a fantastic job at the PR work involved.
As mentioned, Sean managed to find Gary McKay of Northern Contracting Solutions to come in as the excellent contractor to do the actual physical work. He also found Mark Sharrock that works for Brimstone Ltd that specialise in dealing with unexploded ordnance. Mark was present on site during the digging – an essential precautionary move to safeguard the charity on this medium risk site. Before any work started, Sue Clutterbuck, a longtime resident of the Park Ecovillage Findhorn community, held an important land blessing out on the spiral near the site that was appreciated by all who attended,both young and old.
Such projects have been carried out on other sites in the UK and in Europe but this is an experimental first for the FHT and it will be fascinating to see how the dunescapes develop over the coming decades.
Huge thanks to all who helped make this pioneering work happen. With this first phase successfully completed it is now time to secure further funding and plan the next phases of this important environmental work!
Jonathan Caddy
FHT Chair
December 2024
Dune Restoration Project – Celebrating the First Phase Completion
So what does it take to do this work, where we are restoring important habitat which has been disappearing over the decades due to encroaching gorse and trees – for some rare, small, delicate creatures? The work on the ground has taken two mighty big machines that arrived and were off loaded one evening next to Woodside in the Park Ecovillage Findhorn to initially reduce the gorse to a mulch. It took the machines two long days to clear the majority of the area of the 3m+ high impenetrable gorse. The underlying undulating topography of the land has been revealed including the top of one of the high dunes with fabulous distant views.
Once the organic matter was piled up it was then necessary to create gigantic holes – over twenty of them – 5m+ deep – and in most cases over 8m by 8m in dimension. We got to see the underlying structure of the sand and in some cases layers of organic soil as these holes were created. Any organic material and very stoney material had to be kept aside and was returned to these holes with the gorse heaps.
The last phase was to spread the dug out sand over the area covering the holes with at least half a metre of that material. We wanted as much as possible to retain the original topography of the land so again this phase had to be completed with much thought and care.
Thanks goes to many people including those in our community and beyond that helped fund this project, first with the Go Fund Me appeal last Christmas time and then through the Big Give Green Match Fund around last Easter with further financial help granted by Fabio /TSI Moray through the Climate Action Fund and our Hygeia charity friends in the USA. The project has been held jointly between myself and ecologist Sean Reed who did much of the meticulous project planning and a fantastic job at the PR work involved.
Such projects have been carried out on other sites in the UK and in Europe but this is an experimental first for the FHT and it will be fascinating to see how the dunescapes develop over the coming decades.
Huge thanks to all who helped make this pioneering work happen. With this first phase successfully completed it is now time to secure further funding and plan the next phases of this important environmental work!
Jonathan Caddy
FHT Chair
December 2024