Volunteers use discarded Christmas trees to build coastal defenses in England

Hundreds of volunteers and local organizations in Lancashire, England, bury discarded Christmas trees in beach sand to reconstruct natural coastal defenses.

The project, which has operated for over a decade, targets the restoration of sand dunes that provide a critical barrier against the sea for local homes. Amy Pennington of the Lancashire Wildlife Trust explains that these dunes protect against storm waves and wind while naturally rebuilding themselves with sand.

The volunteers dig shallow trenches and place the trees so that the upper branches remain exposed. Wind then carries sand into the needles and branches, creating mounds around each tree. This process can create new dunes within six months to a year, a task that would normally take centuries. Once the mounds form, marram grass colonizes the sand.

The roots of this grass, which can reach lengths of 100 meters, stabilize the dunes as the trees eventually rot and become part of the landscape. The project has successfully added approximately 90 meters of dunes to a beach where none existed before. Beyond coastal protection, these dunes provide a habitat for wildlife, including the sand lizard, a rare reptile that had been absent from the area for 60 years until a release in 2020.

Because rising sea levels and more frequent storm tides continue to erode the coastline, the team plans to start building dunes upward in the next five years to keep pace with the water.