Much ado about Anglesey erratics and Quaternary vandalism

Lleiniog Beach as it was........

...........and as it is, following the removal of the "bothersoeme erratics"

This story has been about for some time, but it looks as if the BBC nationwide has now taken an interest in it.  The writeup on the BBC web site is pretty naff, and I suppose displays a rather typical ignorance of all things glaciological and geomorphological -- but the story is important because it shows how we earth scientists have failed to get the message across that Quaternary exposures and deposits (such as the erratic assemblage on the beach at Lleiniog) are important and should be protected.  I am not sure whether the site is a RIGS site -- it appears that it might be, but that has still not prevented the Council vandalism.  It is certainly within an SSSI.  Citation here:

http://angleseynature.co.uk/webmaps/GPBdesc.html

So Lleiniog is one of the most important Ice Age sites in Wales -- one of the few places where there are two tills -- one local and the other related to the Irish Sea Glacier -- separated by glaciofluvial sands and gravels.  There are also Holocene marine sediments and peat beds belonging to the "submerged forest" outcropping on the foreshore. In the GCR Review volume, pp 134-136, the drift cliff exposures are described in detail -- they have been studied by geologists and geomorphologists for many years, and there are many papers in the literature.  On the beach are (or were) the two largest "super-erratics" on the island of Anglesey.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-45989533

Anyway, good for Gareth Phillips for going after the council!  So why has this happened?  Clearly there has been a major breakdown in the consents and monitoring process.  Our friends in Natural Resources Wales tend -- as we have seen -- to issue licenses for "excavations" with gay abandon, maybe without properly examining the consequences of what is proposed, and without inserting detailed conditions.  And as we have seen, where any conditions are breached, operators (including county councils and archaeological digging teams) probably know that they can get away with it, expecting -- at the most -- a mild letter of disapproval and a request to be more careful in the future.........

One thing that is quite instructive is that the council (who sanctioned or ordered this vandalism) says that they checked beforehand with the archaeologists to make sure they would not do any damage to archaeological features -- and presumably got on with the job when they were given the all-clear.  But why did they not ask for the views of geomorphologists or geologists about what was planned?  Presumably because they placed no value on what they though was just a messy degrading cliffline and a load of inconvenient boulders on a beach........

This story will play out -- but there are shades of what happened at Rhosyfelin, where, over five seasons of digging, Quaternary deposits were systematically dug up and thrown onto a spoil heap because nobody thought that they contained any information of significance.  I complained about it at the time -- and we have had endless discussions about it on this blog --  but it was difficult to take action there because the dig was on private land, and if the owners were happy with what was going on, there was not much of a role for anybody else in protecting the environment.  I don't suppose NRW was involved at all.  So the archaeologists got away with "Quaternary vandalism" there on quite a substantial scale, making quite a mess in the process..........