Local Stephen Betts has recently been taking photos of the dunes and the river mouth groyne. He’s kindly allowed us to publish them, with his commentary.
Two pictures of the Waikawa river groyne approximately 1 month apart, 2019-06-30 (Low Tide) and 2019-07-27 (Low tide).
Now that the groyne has been reshaped there is a real chance the area to the south of the river might start to form some small dunes and fill in the lagoon area that forms at the high tides.
Since the plantings last October, the main planting area has grown about 30 cm and is now starting to cover the lower tape.
While other areas have risen about 60 cm or more around the conservation sign in the background.
An earlier picture of the sign. Original reason for moving it about January 2018 was to try and stop motorcycles going into the dunes.
The only real problem we have had was a couple of weeks ago when someone decided to break the tape and take some firewood.
We add: it’s great to see how well the plantings are coming along. The many people who turned up to help do the planting have made a great contribution. Apparently it’s possible there may be more plants available later this year too.
It’s really disappointing that some folks are so irresponsible as to just cut the tape intended to keep them out of the area simply so they can collect driftwood. Apart from the vandalism, driftwood fulfils an important function on beaches, helping to preserve and stabilise them. Bulk removal of driftwood is to the detriment of the whole community.
And while we’re talking about dunes … the school holidays brought us someone who took a quad bike or similar up into the dunes repeatedly in at least two spots. Again, this erodes and damages the dunes.
