A man is launching a campaign to ask people to bring back pebbles taken from a Welsh beach

A Welsh councillor has issued a plea asking anyone who has taken a pebble from the local beach to bring it back. The plea has been made out of worry that thousands of pebbles have been taken from the beach over the years, and therefore damaging the seaside village's coastal defences.

Councillor Chris Williams asked people to return stones back to the strand on Saundersfoot beach. In a post shared to Saundersfoot Connect, he describe how it is actually illegal to take rocks and pebbles from most beaches.

He said that the pebbles were brought in as a sea defence to protect the Strand area of the village. He said: "These have been brought in over the years to protect the properties and businesses. PCC and property owners are looking at holding a meeting to discuss this ongoing problem of a raising sea level and how we can combat that in the short and long term."

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It comes as people had removed pebbles from the beach to paint as part of a fundraising exercise. He said he wasn't against the fundraising but needed to "stress the importance of the stones and how valuable they are to the properties on the strand", adding: "Without the stones the gardens would simply be washed away.

"As a community we have to make people aware that taking pebbles off the beach will have a big impact on the Strand and its properties. It may appear trivial and insignificant asking people not to take pebbles from the beach but these help play an effective role in protecting our coasts."

Expanding on his comment, Cllr Williams told the Western Telegraph that "we're probably all guilty of picking up that pretty pebble as a souvenir of the seaside." Adding: “But we need every pebble we can get in Saundersfoot – there’s a meeting coming up in the village to discuss coastal erosion and rising sea levels, and the way it’s going on, the properties in The Strand will have been claimed by rising sea levels 75 years on."

He is now asking people to return any pebbles that they have taken from the beach.