GULF SHORES, Ala. — Sometimes Mother Nature needs a hand, and Daphne High School students were happy to oblige on Wednesday, when they planted beach grass at The Pavilion.

Lance Harbison’s agriculture classes helped restore dunes east of the site across from Gulf State Park on East Beach Boulevard. The plantings will help prevent erosion and encourage growth and environment sustenance, according to Margaret Sedlecky, educational coordinator for Weeks Bay Reserve.

“We’re planting bitter panic grass, sea purslane, beach elder and sea oats,” she said. “All four of these are native plants that you’d normally find on the beach.”

Students, who were involved in all aspects of the project — from gardening seedlings in the greenhouse to sand-dune restoration — knew they were making a difference.

“We’re doing it because it’s helping save the beach when the plants help build up the dunes,” Jordan SheIf, 16, said.

Josh Henson agreed that their work is vital.

“It helps preserve the beach by preventing erosion,” he said.

Sedlecky explained that dunes provide “food and environment” for animals in the beach ecosystem such as beach mice and sea turtles.

“The dunes show turtles where to nest,” she said, adding that without them, turtles may lay their eggs too close to the water and they will wash away, she said.

Also, condominium construction destroys natural vegetation, “but there’s no ordinance that says condos have to landscape with native plants,” she said. “Animals have adapted to eat native plants. … Wildlife’s attuned to what nature puts here for them.”

Nature’s delicate balance coordinates plants and animals on a grand scale, Sedlecky said.

For instance, native birds such as brown pelicans and black skimmers rely on the grasses as food sources, she said.

Also, “humming birds migrate this route before they cross the Gulf of Mexico,” she said, adding that the area’s continual development isn’t so inviting for these frequent flyers. “What would you think if you get here and all of a sudden there’s a condo on top of the place where, for hundreds of years, you’ve fed?”

Diane Ingram of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service helped students with their plantings because of similar concerns.

“Endangered species that use this area really need the dunes back for food and environment,” she said.

After the planting, DHS students visited a site west of the pavilion that Harbison’s class worked on last year. Pointing to several developed dunes with large growths atop the mounds, Harbison showed what their labors would become, in time.

Josh Davis, 19, explained that the classes planted different species “in case a disease gets one kind, they need something to back it up.”

Sedlecky said the program — a joint effort between the Baldwin County Grasses in Classes sand dune restoration project and Weeks Bay NationaI Estuarine Research Reserve — is a learning process that she hopes students will never forget.

“We want them to learn about the habitat here in Baldwin County and about endangered species,” she said. “HopefuIIy they will develop a stewardship.”

Sedlecky is investing in the future when she teaches the program.

“These kids, in two or three years, will be voting. HopefuIIy, they’ll make some wise decisions about what should be built on top of them (dunes).”

Such awareness often comes with involvement, she said.

“When they grow them and weed them, these become their plants,” she said.

Students — who had grown flora in the school’s greenhouses — seemed protective of their investments.

“People should be careful not to litter and pull the grasses up because it really can hurt the beaches,” Henson said.

“It’s important — people shouldn’t come mess with the plants and walk through them,” Shelf said.