The Friends of Sauble Beach are working to protect their shoreline environment, even if their best efforts amount to no more than a hill of sand. Especially if they amount to a hill of sand.

In springtime, Friends of Sauble Beach volunteers remove fences that help prevent the sand from eroding during the winter months.

“The activity at the beach was beginning to do serious harm to the dunes that line the shore, especially the south end,” says Dianne Sutter, current chair of the Friends of Sauble Beach, a volunteer organization that’s dedicated to defending the natural environment of this Lake Huron waterfront. Careless foot traffic and recreational vehicles were damaging the dunes and speeding up erosion. The delicate grasses that anchor the sand were being uprooted, and a habitat that’s home to many rare and even endangered species of plants and animals was being destroyed.

Preserving the dunes is not without its awards In 2007, the Friends of Sauble Beach was the recipient of Cottage Life Magazine’s Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award, Cottager Group, for its work to preserve the dunes at Sauble Beach.

“Five years ago, a handful of local year-round and summer resident-volunteers formed a group to take our concerns to our town council. We wanted to be proactive, and needed help to become established as an organization,” Sutter explains. A grant for $46,500 over one year from the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) in 2002 was the impetus that allowed the Friends of Sauble Beach to translate their concern into action.

One of the world’s largest fresh-water beaches, Sauble Beach runs for 11 kilometres along the eastern shore of Lake Huron, just south of the Bruce Peninsula. It consistently ranks among Canada’s top bathing, boating and recreation locations and attracts a large number of visitors every summer.

It’s also part of a rare and very sensitive ecosystem indigenous to certain shoreline areas of the Great Lakes, where the sand and prevailing winds create dunes that shelter developing coastal marshes and lagoon habitats. These areas are targets for migratory birds, many of which are endangered species. Researchers have estimated that two-thirds of the birds at risk in Ontario are strongly oriented towards environments like the one at Sauble Beach.

But what nature takes thousands of years to create can be destroyed in minutes by careless people walking, playing or driving recreational vehicles through it.

Sauble Beach Friends put the finishing touches on one of the cedar benches the organization has built and placed along the beach.

“People are co-operative when they understand how serious the issue is,” says Sutter. “Our goal is to educate the public about the importance of staying off the dunes.” The funding that OTF provided has made that education possible, giving the volunteer Friends of Sauble Beach the tools, resources and encouragement to do the work that’s needed.

“We’ve begun to take education into public schools and have even produced a brochure that explains the importance of the dunes and the shoreline environment to children,” says Sutter. “OTF funding has helped us develop the environmental management plans that we needed to get the municipality’s buy-in for the work we wanted to do in the southern section of the beach. We’ve built walkways, boardwalks and benches in designated, lower-risk areas and put up sand fences to help stop the sand from blowing away. Educational signage that explains why it’s important to stay off the dunes has also been produced.” The Friends have planted an experimental garden where different beach grasses are cultivated and have now commissioned a second study to determine what steps are needed to prevent further damage to the dunes along the north half of the beach.

“This project has all the elements that OTF looks for when trying to decide where to allocate funding,” says Wendy Dempsey, program manager for Grey, Bruce, Huron and Perth. “Committed volunteers, community involvement, well-defined goals and a sustainable future – not to mention a clear and much-needed benefit to the environment.”

The project’s success has been sweet. In the five years that the Friends have been taking their message of environmental respect to the people, there’s been a visible reduction in blow-outs, the holes left when the dunes become unstable and sand is blown away. People are using the designated walkways, grasses are beginning to grow again and, for the first time in 35 years, piping plovers, a once-endangered species of shore birds, have returned to nest. The sand is staying where it belongs at Sauble Beach, and the residents – plants, animals and people – couldn’t be happier.