Australian marine scientist Thomas Schlacher, from the University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore (Queensland), states that off-roading on sandy beaches has a devastating effect on tiny animals that live around sand grains.
These tiny animals, almost too small to see, are either killed outright by the tires of the vehicles, or are left without homes as their habitat is destroyed by the vehicles.
Such destruction of these tiny animals, such as shrimp and sea-snails, however, causes an even worse problem.
The killing of the animals and destruction of their habitat adversely affects the larger ecosystem of the entire area because larger animals do not have as much to eat, which adversely affects even larger animals and likewise up the food chain.
Schlacher states, “Most people go to the beach and don't realize there's actually a lot of life there. If you take a handful of sand you can find dozens of species. The beaches are a habitat full of life." [ABC]
Schlacher and his colleagues studied the impact of off-road driving on those species of animals on four beaches on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland near Noosa.
Two of the beaches, Sunrise Beach and Peregian Beach, does not allow off-road traffic. The other two beaches, Teewah Beach and North Shore Beach, allow 4WD (four-wheel-drive) vehicles.
The researchers found that over 250,000 vehicles drive on these two sandy beaches each year.
Their research found that the two beaches allowing off-roading to occur has much less numbers and varieties of tiny animals in and around the beach area. In fact, Schacher states, “Overall, they were reduced by at least half.” [ABC]
Where to find the study. Please read on.
The results of the Schlacher study (“Sandy beaches at the brink”) appears online in the journal Environmental Management. The other authors in the study include: Jenifer Dugan, Dave S. Schoeman, Mariano Lastra, Alan Jones, Felicita Scapini, Anton McLachlan, and Omar Defeo.
The abstract states, “Beaches are increasingly becoming trapped in a ‘coastal squeeze’ between burgeoning human populations from the land and the effects of global climate change from the sea. Society's interventions (e.g. shoreline armouring, beach nourishment) to combat changes in beach environments, such as erosion and shoreline retreat, can result in severe ecological impacts and loss of biodiversity at local scales, but are predicted also to have cumulative large-scale consequences worldwide.”
The abstract continues: “Because of the scale of this problem, the continued existence of beaches as functional ecosystems is likely to depend on direct conservation efforts. Conservation, in turn, will have to increasingly draw on a consolidated body of ecological theory for these ecosystems. Although this body of theory has yet to be fully developed, we identify here a number of critical research directions that are required to progress coastal management and conservation of sandy beach ecosystems.”
