Another good sense project. No landfill, stabilised dunes, wildlife environment and community. What’s not to like? Well done Blackpool!

A great way to spruce up the environment fir the coastal plants and animals.

What a brilliant project! Feels like the perfect intersections of habitat enhancement, green waste solutions, community engagement and species protection. Not to mention just a wacky clever idea for old xmass trees! Love it!

Good to see this project being covered and what a fine project it is, restoring habitat, cutting waste to landfill and bringing the community together, win, win, win!

Such a clever re-use of what would otherwise be wasted, and an elegant solution to coastal erosion and habitat loss. Simple, yet multi-faceted. Pure brilliance.

I have been restoring Dune Slacks of Amrum/Germany for the last 5 weeks. The Dune Slacks were completely overgrown and dominated by creeping willow and heather, leaving little room for netterjack toads to breed in or low-competitive species. It was an enormous effort to reset the succession to a state of an open, sandy and diverse dune landscape.

Never in my life would I expect Christmas trees planted on a beach. It's a quite unique and encouraging project! I hope more follow suit

I love your passion for nature, I love your enthusiasm for nature restoration, I love your excitement about each topic you discuss and I love your haircut!! Hope you are well Rob! 💚💙💛

I just love when “out of the box” thinking gets support, although I wonder how many people said “that won’t work” before they proved them wrong!

I love this cause it's such a simple project it could be replicated wherever the sand dunes habitat occurs! I imagine that, just like you alluded to, the sand dune ecosystem itself can function like a mangrove forest in the way it can take the brunt of incoming storms and reduce damage done to peoples houses and infrastructure. So it's ecologically, communally and economically beneficial!

Have you been to Formby beach? Red squirrel reserve. Natterjack toad reserve, prehistoric human foot prints and massive sand dunes. Even spotted a Christmas tree or two further back from the sea :P

I did this with a group of people 29yrs ago on troon beach. Nice to see it's still happening 👍

How cool!!! I want to spread the word of this in my own country.

did you see Half as Interesting posted a video about a town that logged the trees on it's dunes and buried itself? The posted that this week the timing is so close!

I love the idea. It reminds me of how Christmas trees are being used in the Louisiana marsh in an effort to combat erosion.

How cool is that! Well done those involved!

Haircut looking fresh in this one champ

It's a great idea. I so enjoyed watching ordinary people get involved and do something wholesome.

What an amazing project, well done Blackpool.

Great use for these trees.

What a great scheme - and proof positive that rewilding brings benefits to human beings. Those sand lizards are so beautiful. I'm really sorry to hear about the rabbits being hammered by myxomatosis - such a crude and cruel method to cure localised excessive numbers. No doubt that is also part of the explanation for the 'plague' of urban foxes.

I used to go to the Lytham sand dunes every time we visited Blackpool. To be honest, it was my favourite part.

The best ideas are often the simplest. I really hope this catches on in places where coastal erosion is a problem.

Thank you for yet another interesting video about something I had never heard of before 😇 We're learning something new every time and the satisfaction of seeing people work hard on restoring nature and rewilding etc... it warms my leafy green heart 💚🌿

Your enthusiasm is contagious my friend!! I love to see these kind of projects!!

This is brilliant! Those conifer trees have a ton of surface area and little crevices for sand to get stuck in. Both the trees and the sand end up really firmly anchored in place.

Thanks to all of you at Leave Curious for another video showing the simplest actions can make a huge impact on a particular environment. Well done !

I think this is a wonderful approach! Where I live, we don’t landfill any plant waste. From mostly-vegetal kitchen scraps to dead Christmas trees and garden cuttings, it all goes into a “green waste” bin for each household and is picked up weekly, along with the trash and recycling bins. All the plant materials go into a “high-temperature composter” of huge capacity to make garden compost, returned to the public. There are very few things we’re actually allowed to put into the trash here. The green waste bin also takes things like pizza boxes, food-stained paper plates and containers, napkins, etc. that can’t go in the paper recycling. It’s a pretty good system, I think curbside pickup is the key. We also can take household hazardous waste like batteries, old paints/chemicals and light bulbs in to the facility four days a week. All the resources, like metals, that can be are extracted and sold for re-use. I’m always picking up small discarded batteries on my walks, then batch them to go to the Haz Waste (I carry a plastic baggie for if they are corroded, to protect my skin and clothes on the way home).

Very interesting, thank you for making the video! 😊 Cheers, Patrik

Preventing soil erosion and creating additional land overtime. Great work Blackpool. Wish we did this in California, I see so many christmas trees on the side walks and parks every year.

Great video Rob, and like one or two other posters, it’s my home town of Lytham St Anne’s! The dunes have always been prone to erosion, often due to the heavy footfall of tourists and once damaged storms can literally blow them away. This is a great way to stabilise them. Two fun facts, natives of Lytham St Anne’s are referred to as “Sandgrown” and the area just inland of the dunes was once known as “Blowing Sands”, but I don’t think you’ll find that on modern maps.

I found your channel a few days ago and I'm hooked! Particularly love this video, I grew up on a beautiful beach with sand dunes. It's great to learn more about them! Thank you ❤

Scientists in a few thousand years: “There was a forest of conifers growing right along the coast”

Happens every post-Christmas where I live - hurricane-prone coastal North Carolina. This helps build and stabilize the dunes which protect the beaches from erosion and storm surge.

Great video. Just the sort of content that resonates with many of us. Local initiatives helping to restore, maintain and create habitats and recycling to boot! Keep up the good work! 👏

We place ours in our chicken yard each year. The hens love to cozy up under the drying branches for protection for the wind and heat in summer. Once we replace it with the following years tree we burn the old one and mix the ashes into the exisiting soil. The tree usually stays fairly green until mid to late summer so its really not an eye sore.

How fantastic. Such a simple idea makes such a difference. I went to Hawaii a few years ago and the erosion of the beaches on O'ahu was shocking. Turtle Bay had bad erosion too. I was told the sand on the beach in Honolulu came from Australia.

It's a great idea. Although I won't be sacrificing the Christmas tree I made so that I no longer have to cut one down each year 😋

Fantastic idea, wonderful to see a community coming together in a project to help the environment and protect the coastline 😀👍

i'm curious if the acidity (and probably pesticides) of the trees will effect the dunes. if not, it is a very cool project.

Not all heroes wear capes.

What a great project! And thanks for making a video about it!

Brilliant. Well done guys.

Awesome! You all are AMAZING 🥰

Glad to see a video on this, as a fan of your channel and a Blackpool local that grew up playing on these dunes and looking for the wildlife on the nature reserve there, this is a great local project!

Great video - loving the content was out running today and saw that beavers are being reintroduced near me in rushden lakes northamptonshire which made me smile as I just watched your video on beavers the other day

What a lovely project 👍

Will Pearce's ''Tear Up The Ground" has been a favorite song of mine for a while, but I hadn't seen the dune succession process talked about in a real-life context yet! Got very excited when I recognized what the video will be about xD Very glad I found this channel where I can learn about real work being done to restore and maintain wild habitats. Keep up the good work!

Texas beaches have been doing this since the 1970’s. It builds up sand dunes on barrier islands.

A simple brilliant idea as they are certainly declining everywhere

An amazing idea Well done!

This has been going on for donkeys years at Formby and the nearby beaches to protect the sand dunes.

What a fun project, love it

This is also being one in some small rivers in Scotland. It slows the erosion of the riverbanks and provides shelter and breeding areas for fish and insects

Yes a brilliant idea that you have explained well in this video

For those who don't live on an island, Xmas tress make great sanctuaries for fingerlings

WELL DONE! Merry Christmas AND a happy new beach!

Its a fantastic project.

Very interesting! There need to be more projects like this

Great video. Short and sweet

What a good Idea, reduce the waste, and knowing the story of Blackpool, it's great, It's such a peculiar tradition and absolutely impressive, it also adds deadwood matter which is lacking in Europe and excellent for insects. It probably doesn't help that sedimentation on beaches has been greatly reduced making it harder for young sand dunes to form as beaches enter recession

What a great idea! Thanks for the upload. :)

In Argentina we have sand dunes in a large portion of our coast line, but about a century ago a bunch of people started buying up the coastlines and planting full forests on top of them (with foreign species) to settle the sand and to be able to utilize the land. Nowadays, most of the coastline has been turned into beach towns that receive hundreds of thousands of tourists each, every summer. The tows are basically built on top of the sand dunes, the ones with the pinecone forests are the most desirable and exclusive (some examples are Cariló, Pinamar, Mar de las Pampas, Costa Esmeralda). This whole thing has had a terrible impact on the environment. The sand dunes work as sand banks for the beaches. By foresting the dunes, they prevent the beaches from regenerating and are thus getting ‘eaten’ by the sea. There have been similar approaches as the one shown in the video, they have built a sort of trenches with wooden sticks that have been successful in restoring the sand dunes and actually making them grow, but that doesn’t solve the problem.

Your vlogs should be shown on The BBC One Show. You're doing a great job in bringing nature conservation to the public 👏

Inspired by this video I went to bury my Christmas tree in the sand as well. Turns out primary schools are not happy when you bury a tree in their sandbox. Apparently they are not meant to be a thriving ecosystem... You learn something every day.

Would love to see a followup in spring/summer!❤

This would be great for Gulf of Mexico states. Rebuild the coastlines, which would bring back so much stability to the area. Louisiana is in great need.

This is brilliant. Exactly what ecology should be!!

Great idea !

Really interesting video. I really enjoyed it.

Cool! Thank you!

Very lovely and believable.

wonderful! I want to see it...

Thanks!

This is very cool!❤

They did this in Maine, USA this year. Thank you for explaining why they are trying this out, as our local news is useless.

What a great idea! Fire island NY US should follow. They are losing beach due to erosion. Good for the beaches and good for community.

nice. here in louisiana, we use christmas trees to deter coastal erosion and catch sediment. we've been doing this for many years with good results. they're not planted though, just piled up along the waterway.

Love this.

It is brilliant, I love to walk along the dunes, I saw a sand lizard last summer which is great! 🙏❤️

This could be any kind of wood / vegetation that can provide some structure. Love the creativity of the thinking that led to this project.

Here in USA recreational parks, usually have have programs where they take Xmas and turn them into mulch or saw dust. However it never occurred to me that xmas trees could be used for sand dunes. It's also good for woodland, dead trees benefit the ecosystem. Logs if they thick can be used for mushroom harvesting.

Love the lickle mouse at 6:17!!!❤❤❤

Awesome!

Great video

Fantastic…..🎉

Brilliant

Excellent

Have you seen the rewilding project that Mapperton Estate, in Dorset, is doing? Pretty cool. 😊

This is seems like a great idea, I am surprised i haven't seen it up here in Scotland where i have seen many a beach sign about preserving the dunes, regenerating dunes, fencing off the dunes etc....I hope it catches on up here)

Very cool 🌲🌲🌲

Really interesting 🤔..

must admit i wasn't expecting you here , glad i fond another channel

a great example of if we direct humanity's efforts correctly, living in balance with our planet should be easily attainable

Fantastic! That's well done to Blackpool!

I walked past these the other day with my dog was wondering what they was there for

Thumbs up. Like using old wind turbine blades for underwater structure for reefs.

Cool! Also in 2000 yrs from now it'll be a great mystery to archaeologists ❤

I've been thinking about projects to use these in the ocean for habitat.

Wish they would do this at southwold in Suffolk the dunes are a mess