Planting to save coastal dunes

By mixing a bit of science, a touch of business and a background in agriculture, Otto M. Bundy, AG ’60M, has stabilized more than 9,000 acres of coastal and upland habitats and has become an unofficial guardian of the environment.

Owner of Environmental Plant Resources Inc., in Parrish, Fla., which he opened in 1974 under a different name, Bundy has contributed more than 8 million plants to bolster the coastal and upland habitats on the East Coast, the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.
Bundy’s system is one of the more cost-effective stabilization efforts of such habitats because of its permanence—if properly designed, he says, it will continually function as a filter for dunes.

“Over the years, [the plants] will collect and deposit the dune in the proper location, using the natural sand that is moved in from off-shore,” he says. “The plant material will prevent [the sand] from being blown inland and be lost to function in a dune system during a hurricane event.”

With the acceleration of hurricane activity, the need for human involvement increases as well, he says.

“Human intervention is necessary to aid in the repair of the dune system that is destroyed,” he says. “There is the potential for more than one storm to occur in the same location in a hurricane season. Natural process of dune or vegetative restoration of it is not rapid enough to form new protection of property or life.”

The specimens of beach plants his company grows are superior to those grown at the coastline because the nursery plants have a chance to develop a strong root system that has been undisturbed by environmental effects, he says. This strong root also provides for an easy transplant into the sand, and it can therefore begin working to protect the dune immediately.

The native plants are too delicate because of their exposure to the high energy of waves during a hurricane, he says. So the nursery plants step in to do the job.
In fact, the lack of such good specimens of native plants was what led Bundy to hatch his plant business in the first place. When he was working for a paper company that was involved in researching the use of biodegradable papers in agricultural plant production, he couldn’t find enough samples of plants he needed for his trials.

“When working with biodegradable knit fabrics used as mulches on the beaches during the [reproduction] process, I needed sea oats plants for my trials, and they were not available in sufficient numbers,” he says. “This need became one of my first objectives to address when I went into my own native plant nursery business.”

Since then, Bundy has developed approximately 65 acres to use for growing such coastal plants, and he has worked on restoration projects across the southeastern United States and Caribbean and has partnered with federal, state and local agencies, commercial developers, dredging firms and private property owners.

He has also partnered with UD scientists Denise Seliskar and Jack Gallagher of the College of Marine and Earth Studies on research they have pursued over the years and continues to work as a consultant on their ongoing projects.

Overall, he says he is most proud that his work has led to a “steady increase of the public and commercial awareness of the environment.”

—Laura Overturf Stetser, AS ’99