| Parish/Township | Wellington |
| County | Kent |
| Signifigance | Bird, Plant, Geology |
| Total Area | 42 hectares |
Piping Plover
Beaks & Feathers
The Dunes of Bouctouche. Photo courtesy of Gilles Daigle
|
||||||||||
|
The Dunes of Bouctouche. Photo courtesy of Gilles Daigle | |||||||||
| A sandspit or sandbar is a strip of land formed along a shoreline as water currents move along the shore and deposit sand. The remarkably long (over 11km) sandbar in Bouctouche was created about two thousand years ago by a longshore current from the north. Sand dunes are formed as plants, particularly Marram Grass, catch the blowing, shifting sand in their roots and force it to pile up. Marram Grass sends out special roots called rhizomes which can grow new plants. | Looking at a dune's surface there appears to be thousands of individual plants. Just under the surface however, the connected roots and rhizomes form one huge Marram Grass plant which can cover an entire dune. On the Bouctouche sandbar the dunes range in height from half a metre to three metres. The salt marsh coves and stranded depressions between dunes form habitats for birds such as Common Terns, Great Blue Herons and the endangered Piping Plover. Rare plants such as Seaside Pinweed (Lechea maritima) and Catfoot (Gnaphalum obtusifolium) have been found on the sandbar. | |||||||||
|
|
| ||||||||