Sandlife | stir in the sand

Thanks for us

In the spring of 2018, the last restorations were made in the Life-project Sand Life and in July the same year the project was officially closed. It has been 6 eventful years with valuable restorations of sandy habitats in southern Sweden and many interesting meetings and discussions around the sandy environments.

The website will remain until 2023, but will only be updated sporadically. However, there is still information available about the project on the website and all the results can be downloaded under the heading Materials.

However, we continue to manage the sandy habitats and mabye we meet out in the field.

Life will once again flourish on sandy soils

Sand Life is a project to restore the once abundant flora and fauna of the sand dunes and heaths of southern Sweden. Overgrown Natura 2000 areas on sandy ground in Skåne, Halland and on Öland will be opened up in order to make them more accessible, both to the general public and to rare plants and animals.

The sand dunes and heaths of southern Sweden are among northern Europe’s most species-rich habitats. Over the past 100 years, sand dunes and sand heaths in coastal and inland areas have been planted with conifers and non-native species such as mountain pine and Japanese rose, converted to agricultural land or commercially exploited. Today, few open sandy habitats remain, but even these are becoming overgrown because of nitrogen deposition and changes in land use. Many plant and animal species have been pushed out to the few areas where an open sandy habitat still exists. This project provides the county administrative boards with the opportunity to restore some of the most valuable habitats in southern Sweden. The County Administrative Boards of Skåne, Halland and Kalmar, together with Kristianstads Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve and Lund University, have received EU funding to implement the project over the course of six years.

You can also follow the project on Instagram through #sandlife_sweden.