Dr Kevin Lynch

The beach, especially a low tide, is normally huge and loads of space there for people.

I suppose one of the other things is in terms of the biodiversity and the plants and animals, the birds actually nest on the ground on beaches, on the upper beaches and in the sand dunes.

So if people could keep their dogs on leashes, if they're allowed on the beaches, a lot of the bylaws don't prevent dogs on beaches during the summer.

But if they could keep them on the leash, it would be really helpful for the ground nesting birds as well.

No, I'm afraid there's a variety of reasons why they're not, but primarily it's because they're too extensive to fence off everything.

A lot of them are on farmer's lands and so they'd be less accessible to people, but publicly owned ones, generally they wouldn't be fenced off.

So we're working on a number of sites to

Not so much fence them off, but kind of direct people through them so that they can go through them safely rather than trampling everywhere.

Yeah, exactly.

And then, you know, at major access points, there might be, you know, ramp ways or steps or whatever that people can use as well.

So if people could use them, it would be really handy and really take the pressure off the rest of the sand dunes.

Yeah, of course it does.

But, you know, it's up to everybody to be responsible and take away the waste.

Leave no trace, I suppose, is the main message if you...

bring it in, bring it back out again with you.

And the other thing then, of course, is the safety side of it.

Especially after the winter storms, you have dune faces that look very inviting for kids to

dig into and make a little cave or whatever, but they can be very dangerous.

They collapse very easily and you just can't dig people out when they're buried under sand.

So just to be very careful on that front as well.