Flower-speckled sand dunes have returned to South Carlsbad State Beach thanks to a successful restoration started a little more than two years ago. Wooden slats and fences were installed in various configurations on sections of the upper beach just north and south of the jetties lining the Batiquito s Lagoon outlet in the area known as Ponto beach. “The project had an experimental design to test different methods of building dunes,” said Carrie Benner, a coastal environmental scientist with the California Department of Parks and Recreation. “We started nine plots that consisted of either rows of sand fencing, or groups of cedar shims, or a combination of both to basically test out which methods do best at building the dunes and helping to establish vegetation,” Benner said in a recent presentation to Carlsbad’s Beach Preservation Commission. The combination of fencing and shims proved the most productive, she said. As a result two more plots were added making a total of 11. The public response has been positive. “People like to see that we’re trying to keep sand on the beach,” she said. “They tend to like the flowers and the greenery. Overall, we are pretty pleased, and we’re looking forward to continuing this work in the future.” The main idea behind the project is “biomimicry,” or replicating what dune vegetation does naturally when it captures sand blown across the beach by the wind, Benner said. “As sand gets blown, it might hit a plant or part of a plant, and as that plant accumulates sand then it starts to grows on top of the sand, and that starts the process of building a dune,” she said. One of the parks department’s consultants, a coastal scientist, proposed the idea after noticing how sand from the beach blew across Carlsbad Boulevard, forming a small dune in the median of the road. “He saw an opportunity to … retain that sand and keep it on the beach,” Benner said. “We were definitely on board with this … our staff has aimed to have dune restoration sites at this beach before.” In addition to slowing erosion and preserving native habitat, the dunes protect the adjacent Carlsbad Boulevard, also known has Highway 101, from erosion and reduce the need to remove sand from the roadway. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the nearby lagoon, agreed to participate in the project. As part of its maintenance, the Fish and Wildlife Service clears vegetation from the least tern nesting sites at the edge of the lagoon. “We were able to grab that vegetation and scatter it throughout the plots, knowing that there were seeds within the discarded pieces,” Benner said. “That’s how we were basically able to get some seeds and plants started.” No irrigation was needed, she said. “We rely purely on rainwater, and we got very lucky with two quite wet years in 2023 and 2024.” she said. “We’ve seen some pretty substantial growth just in those past two-and-a-half years.” Photos from 1979 show the natural vegetated dunes that once lined most of North County beaches. The plants and most of the dunes had disappeared by 2013, the result of being trampled by increasing numbers of visitors. Other Southern California coastal communities also have built or are considering dune restoration projects. Most, like the one in Carlsbad, can be a relatively low-cost method of preserving the eroding coastline. Oceanside accepted a $56,000 state grant in December 2023 for a pilot project to preserve sand, create wildlife habitat and protect nearby parking lots and structures on three separates sites north of the city’s iconic wooden pier. Locations for the Oceanside project are still being refined. The largest is about half an acre near a public parking lot just south of the harbor. ...read more read less