Vehicles and Feet are Sand Dune Killers

For sand dunes to protect our beaches, they must be no-go zones for people and vehicles.

New Plymouth District Council is reminding coastal users that motorbikes, quad bikes and other vehicles must not be driven on sand dunes along our coastline – and people shouldn’t walk on them either.

“It happens every season, with vehicles driving over the sand dunes or along the toe of them during high tide and damaging the dune-binding plants and their runners,” says Manager Parks Programmes Steve McGill.

“We’d like to get the message out early this year so that people know that for sand dunes to do their job in reducing beach erosion, they must be left alone.

“When you’re walking or driving onto a beach, please use the formed accessways that are in place.”

Already, people have been seen driving along some beaches and ignoring the formal access points in favour of cutting over the top of dunes. Some fences protecting the dunes have been removed.

Vehicles and people on sand dunes crush the plants that are binding the sand and keeping it from blowing away. The damage has a cumulative effect: For every small area damaged, the plants on the edge suffer and die as well, increasingly expanding erosion along a dune.

“Healthy sand dunes grow over time, which in turn build up the depth of sand on the beach and increases the beach’s resistance to erosion during storms,” says Mr McGill.

“We’ve had school groups and the general public putting in a lot of time to put thousands of native plants on the dunes over the years, and vehicles and feet can crush them so easily.

“Dunes are a fragile ecology and the only way to keep them healthy is to stay off them.

“We have developed the dunes as a public project, and we’d like the public’s assistance to keep them undamaged.”

Emergency vehicles may be driven on a beach, as well as vehicles towing a boat to the water as long as they are removed immediately afterward – no parking on a beach is allowed.

Boat access ramps in the popular Oakura stretch of coastline are next to the New Plymouth Old Boys’ Surf Life Saving Club, and off Ahu Ahu and Weld roads.