Winter 2024/25 practical conservations sessions

Friends of the Towans have been blessed with some beautiful sunshine on some of our practical conservation sessions this winter, and even when there was a mixed forecast, we were still able to find a sheltered spot to work in away from the occasional shower! Only one session had to be cancelled because of heavy rain.

At one of our sessions at Upton Towans, we were joined by volunteers from Cornwall Wildlife Trust, and we made great progress on removing some vigorous invasive and non-native plants. We had some interesting lunchtime discussions about the reproductive habits of the frogs which were very active in the pond near where we were working!

We’ve also worked with Andy Nelson from the Making Space for Sand project, clearing some patches of the invasive plant, Rosa rugosa, near the coast path by St Ives Bay Holiday Park. And we were delighted to welcome a team from Aspects Holidays, which recently gave Friends of the Towans a generous donation to help support our work.

For another session, we headed to the south-western section of Mexico Towans, where we made great progress tackling a dense cotoneaster thicket, by cutting – and where possible, pulling up – this non-native shrub, to stop it spreading into the surrounding dune grassland. Cotoneaster is another invasive plant that can out-compete our less vigorous native dune plants.

On one of our days at Mexico Towans, we were joined by a photography student who was working on a project about Cornwall’s sand dunes, highlighting the work communities and volunteers are doing to restore them.

At Gwithian Towans, we’ve been cutting blackthorn and gorse to widen a path and open up an area of scrub to encourage the regeneration of the dune grassland plants. February was our last month of scrub and shrub cutting until the autumn – we don’t want to disturb the birds as they start to nest as spring arrives.