A collaborative project led by Natural Resources Wales (NRW) has reintroduced dozens of rare Shore Dock plants in the Southerndown Coast Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) along the Glamorgan Heritage Coast.

Shore Dock is a globally threatened plant and has recently become extinct from the Dunraven Bay Special Area of Conservation (SAC), which is located within the wider Southerndown Coast SSSI.

Within Wales, it is currently only found in coastal areas on Anglesey and in Pembrokeshire, although Pembrokeshire’s Shore Dock population was reduced following storms in 2013 and 2014. In the rest of the UK, it is mostly found in Devon and Cornwall.

Shore Dock was first discovered in Dunraven Bay in 1934 and continued to be recorded there until 1958. It was rediscovered in 1996 with Dunraven Bay SAC designated with Shore Dock as a key species in 2004.

Since then, Shore Dock has disappeared from the Dunraven Bay SAC due to erosion and rock falls which has been exacerbated in recent years due to more frequent and more extreme storm events linked to climate change, and was last seen by NRW officers in 2018.