Old tobacco waste site to be transformed to support sand lizards and rare toads

Project aims to make site – currently flat and covered in nettles – a better environment for local animal populations

The National Trust is set to start work restoring the Formby ‘tobacco cliffs’ (Google Maps)

An old site for dumping tobacco waste is being transformed in a bid to support wildlife, including a rare species of toad, sand lizards and beetles.

Sand dunes in Merseyside that no longer provide a suitable habitat for wildlife are being restored as part of a project by the National Trust.

The site in Formby, which was once used as a dumping ground for wet tobacco leaf by the British Nicotine Company, is now flat and covered in nettles.

“It effectively creates a barrier that prevents toads and lizards from being able to move across the site,” Isabelle Spall from the National Trust said.

“The animals need areas of bare sand mixed with patches of vegetation, so they have places to hunt and bask as well as room to hibernate, and for lizards, somewhere to lay eggs.”

The National Trust is hoping to restore the “tobacco cliffs” in Formby in a way that will help nature thrive once more.

It follows a push to rewild parts of the UK landscape, which has seen the government pledge to restore up to 300,000 hectares of natural habitat by the end of the decade.

The new project in Merseyside is part of the £10m Dynamic Dunescapes scheme, the funders of which include an EU programme for climate action and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Its restoration will involve blowing sand from the beach onto the top of the tobacco waste and the nettles. It is hoped that the excavation of two large V-shaped wedges will trigger this process and create new, undulating dunes on the site.

It will also focus on supporting wildlife, including natterjack toads – a rare species who are the loudest amphibians in Europe.

The project will create a dozen breeding pools for the animals and remove invasive plants to form bare patches of sand for them to hide in.

These toads are increasingly under pressure due to the loss of their natural habitats as well as the climate crisis and rising pollution, the National Trust said.

Ms Spall said the Sefton Coast dune system, to which Formby belongs, was one of the last strongholds for the toads, so it was crucial to link the habitats in order to boost their chances of survival.

“We hope this work will offer them a lifeline,” she said.

The restoration is also aimed at helping other wildlife, including sand lizards, who bury their eggs in bare sand, and the rare northern tiger beetle, which is only found in Merseyside and Cumbria.

Numerous rewilding projects have been launched in the UK in a bid to return its landscapes and ecosystems to a more natural state in a bid to boost nature and tackle the climate crisis.

Some of these have also seen wildlife – such as beavers – reintroduced to habitats in the UK.

Additional reporting by Press Association