NAHANT — Resident and beach walker Bill Foster has decided to take measures to stop the erosion of the dunes at Nahant Beach, which he said threatens the safety of the surrounding buildings, roads, and birds.
Foster said that he had first started noticing the signs of the dunes’ erosion five to 10 years ago, but he only started to act last week, because he noticed that the situation had deteriorated rapidly.
“It is at a crisis point now,” said Foster, who said he loved walking on the beach and looking at beach birds. “I am that person who said, ‘nobody is doing anything, I better do something about it.’”
The dunes are important for several reasons: They protect the land and, in the case of Nahant, protect the houses, roads, and walking paths against potential damage from ocean waves, floods and other types of water damage.
Coastal dunes and their associated habitat also constitute an attractive breeding ground for the shore birds, offering both thick cover and ready food supplies.
“They are the place where many seabirds, like the piping plovers, lay their eggs during the summer,” said Foster.
The piping plover is a small territorial shore bird with a white belly and a light-beige back and crown. Their Atlantic Coast and Northern Great Plains populations were listed as threatened in the U.S. in 1985. It is also listed as near-threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
Foster said that in some places along the Nahant Beach, there were only two or three feet of sand left between the ocean, the walking path and the road, which was not enough for the piping plovers to mate, because they needed some privacy.
“The birds don’t like to be close to people and dogs when they are making their young,” said Foster. “If they don’t have enough space, they won’t make a nest.”
According to Foster, the Nahant Beach dunes were wearing away over the years due to people walking over them and because of storms.
“I have watched the piping plovers and the sandpipers, and birds like that just pretty much disappear from the beach,” said Foster. He estimated that there used to be thousands of them on that beach, and now “you only see 10 or 15.”
“It is their last chance to survive,” he said.
Another reason why it is important to stop erosion is because it might be affecting the safety of residents.
“Now (the tide) is like four or five feet from the parking lot,” said Michael O’Callaghan, president at the Tides Restaurant & Pub in Nahant. “Every time we get a storm, it takes more of the dunes away.”
O’Callaghan said that it would be embarrassing if a storm were to take off part of the walkway or of the parking lot some day.
“And that seems to be the direction that it is going in,” he added.
To save the birds and stop the dunes from eroding, Foster reached out to the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), local businesses interested in beach preservation, and to the Friends of Lynn & Nahant Beach, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and improvement of Lynn Shore & Nahant Beach Reservation. Now there is a small community of four or five people who help Foster in his pursuit.
Lynn Shore & Nahant Beach Reservation is managed by DCR, according to the DCR website. It is a protected coastal reservation covering more than 67 acres of beach and recreational areas in the city of Lynn and town of Nahant, the Nahant Beach Facebook page says.
O’Callaghan said he has contacted DCR multiple times, but got discouraged by the lack of action.
“I gave up a few years back,” he said. “I just don’t know why the state wouldn’t take care of it.”
DCR didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We do have the support of the business community that uses the beach,” Foster said.
The proposed plan is to get a heavy piece of equipment called a bucket loader from DCR to push the sand from the beach up to the edge of the dunes, creating a buffer that will protect the dunes; to get signs put up asking people to stop walking on the dunes; and to put up a couple of fences to keep people out.
“It all fits together,” said Foster. “To make people more aware of the plight of the birds.”