Friends of the Dunes Executive Director Mike Cipra joins us to talk about new national recognition of the importance of Lanphere and Ma-le'l Dunes in the northwest corner of Humboldt Bay. On January 19, these unique public lands were designated as one of three new National Natural Landmarks by outgoing Secretary of the Interior David H. Bernhardt.
These lands are being recognized by the National Park Service for their outstanding variety of sand dunes ecosystems, from coastal dunes to beaches. Now managed by the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge and Bureau of Land Management, these dunes are important cultural sites to the Wiyot Tribe. They are remarkable for a diversity of native plants, habitats, and pollinator, in large part due to 40 years of restoration work to remove European beachgrass, iceplant, and yellow bush lupine to restore natural dune movement.
No access rules are changing as a result, and the designation may help prioritize the area for funding to continue ongoing restoration work that has relied heavily on volunteers for decades.
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