THE sand dunes and precious rare wildlife at Morfa Harlech National Nature Reserve are set to benefit from state-of-the-art intervention, designed to boost and support habitats at the important conservation site.

Sands of LIFE is an EU-funded and Natural Resources Wales led conservation project to revitalise sand dunes across Wales.

The project will employ robo-mowers, which is a type of robotic mower, onto the dunes.

These will create a bare sand habitat for native wildflowers and invertebrates.

The work is being completed in partnership with the Royal St David’s Golf Club in Harlech, which owns the land where the conservation work is taking place.

Unlike normal mowing machinery, robo-mowers can climb steep dunes and further help the habitat.

The project will also be enlisting the help of a four-legged spider excavator machine which will climb the dunes.

This will scrape the turf to create bare sand habitat.

One spider excavator does the job of three differently designed excavators, while reducing its carbon footprint and impacts when crossing the golf course.

Over the last 80 years, open sand has largely disappeared from Welsh sand dunes.

This has been replaced by dense grass and scrub.

The change has been caused by factors such as the introduction of non-native plants, lower levels of grazing, climate change and air pollution.

As the dunes have become more stable and overgrown, the rare wildlife has declined.

Leigh Denyer is Sands of LIFE project and monitoring officer north. She said: “We are glad to be able use innovative techniques as part of our wider efforts to help keep our sand dunes healthy.

“Whilst conventional machinery can do the job in most instances, the steep dunes found at Morfa Harlech means the robo-mowers and spider excavators will be able to reach areas otherwise unreachable.

“All of this work will provide a timely boost to the native wildflowers and invertebrates that call the internationally important dunes at Morfa Harlech their home.

“We would like to thank Royal St David’s Golf Club for their time and effort in helping us complete this work.

“Also, we would like to thank our contractors GMD Forestry for their contribution to supporting the conservation of the dunes.”

Rhys Butler is the links manager at Royal St David’s Golf Club.

He said: “We at Royal St David’s Golf Club are proud to be working closely with Natural Resources Wales to help make a difference and provide the sand dune habitat with a boost for the future.

“We see the importance of open bare sand areas as habitat for wildlife and can see that Sands of LIFE’s work helps achieve more of it.

“It is great to be part of such a project.

“We look forward to seeing the results over the coming years.”