New Zealand's coast could be littered with rock walls if more money is not made available for research into it, a coastal protection group says.
The Coastal Dune Vegetation Network starts its three-day annual conference at Te Papa in Wellington today.
And it will give the Government the message thatlack of cash is the problem.
Network chairman Harley Spence said annual funding of $150,000 to $200,000 for a full-time scientist had disappeared as more and more environmental groups vied for Government money.
"In terms of the big picture of tourism, and the alternatives to not saving dunes, that's absolute chickenfeed," he said.
Planting dunes with native grasses such as pingao and protecting them from human activity was the best way to avoid erosion, said Mr Spence.
Alternatives were expensive and environmentally unacceptable.
They included concrete or rock seawalls, transferring sand from one place to another or, in the worst case, "you have to pack up and move and we all know how popular that would be".
The next step in protecting the foreshore from erosion was to research areas behind dunes to prevent the kind of sudden deterioration that had happened in places like Port Waikato where beachfront properties were threatened.
But the research would not be done unless more money could be found.
"There is an unbelievable amount of community will but if we don't get funding then we will probably stall," Mr Spence said.
