By Rich Pollack
Saving the sensitive and environmentally important sand dunes along Highland Beach’s 3-mile stretch of oceanfront is becoming a priority for the town’s fledgling Beaches and Shores Club.
Formed after the Town Commission dissolved its Beaches and Shores Advisory Board, the new club is putting a focus on educating residents about the need to preserve the marine dune ecosystem through the eradication of invasive species, which can push out protective native plants.
At the next meeting at 1:30 p.m. Jan. 10 in the Highland Beach Public Library, the committee and members of the public are expected to hear from town resident Dan Bellante, co-owner of Green Coast Consulting, which has experience in dune restoration.
The club is also expected to elect officers that day.
“Preserving the dune is in everyone’s best interest,” Bellante said.
Bellante and George Gann, founder and chief conservation strategist for the Delray Beach-based Institute for Regional Conservation, say that eradicating invasive species on dunes — and allowing native plants to come back — can have many benefits.
“The closer you get to the historic dune system, the better it is for nature and the better it is for people,” Gann said.
For nature, a restored dune benefits birds and other wildlife by providing native habitat. The healthy dune also helps protect beaches from erosion in several ways, including allowing plants to thrive that hold the sand well.
“It’s what you have to do if you want to stop erosion,” Bellante said.
People also benefit from healthy dunes because of increased aesthetic appeal, especially if residents create a beach garden with native plants. More important, residents who live near the beach benefit because the dune creates a buffer that will break up waves.
“The dune is the only thing between you and the ocean,” Gann said.
Without a healthy dune, ocean water could end up in backyards and on roadways.
The problem could become even greater, Gann says, if sea water rises as predicted.
“The higher the sea gets, the less distance there is between us and it,” he said. “The wider the dune is, the more protection you have from sea-level rise.”
In addition, nonnative vegetation on a dune can easily be ripped from the sand and become projectiles.
The biggest problem, however, is that invasive plants can spread and crowd out native species.
“Anything that reduces diversity in a dune system will make it less resilient,” Gann said.
Plants such as Brazilian pepper, for example, can take over a dune and crowd out beneficial indigenous grasses and plants, including sea oats, which tend to capture sand.
Even native species, such as sea grapes, can be a problem when they get too big and prevent other short, grassy plants and shrubs from thriving.
“Invasive species are a community problem,” Gann said.
That’s the message Bellante and the Beaches and Shores Club hope to get across to beach-property owners in Highland Beach.
Because the town has no public beach, much of the responsibility for removing exotics will fall on the shoulders of individual homeowners or condominium associations with beach property.
“We’re hoping to encourage them to restore their dunes to a natural healthy state,” Bellante said.
One way to educate residents, he said, is through a report he is creating as well as through presentations — like the one he is giving this month — to beach property owners.
Eliminating exotic species, Bellante says, is an important step in restoring an ecosystem that has been damaged over time.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he said.
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