Flanders has the most urbanised coastline of Europe, north of the Pyrenees and the Alps. During the 20th century seaside resorts grew to one another to finally form one urban agglomeration from the Dutch to the French border, only locally interrupted by some rather small not built up areas of dunes. However even the remaining and legally protected 'natural areas' often include buildings, roads or even dredging sludge dumps. In this situation of an extremely damaged and fragmented natural environment, management by mowing and grazing is not sufficient to restore it to a satisfactory level. Open space and physical conditions have to be restored in order to create chances for the redevelopment of natural habitats and wild species. In this paper an overview is given of the most important nature restoration works that have been or are currently being carried out by the Nature Division along the Flemish coast since the year 1995 . These projects include: (1) the demolition of the buildings of the former children-home 'Georges Theunis' - to reactivate large scale sand drift (1995) and the removal of a soil dump - to recreate a wet dune slack (1997) in the Flemish Nature Reserve 'Ter Yde' at Oostduinkerke; (2) the digging off of soil dumps and the excavation of a former raceway - to restore decalcified fossil dunes (1997-2000) in the Flemish Nature Reserve 'D'Heye' at Bredene; (3) the complete demolition of the former military harbour and the digging off of the dredging spoil-dumps - to restore mud flats, salt marshes and sand dunes (1999-2003) in the Flemish Nature Reserve 'The Yzer-rivermouth' at Nieuwpoort; (4) the demolition of the former 'Swimming Pool' - to create a pond, a wet dune-slack and grey and white dunes (2004) in the Flemish Nature Reserve 'Zwin-dunes and polders' at Knokke; (5) the demolition of the former sewage treatment plant of Nieuwpoort - to restore calcareous marshland and humid dune slack areas (2004-2005) in the fossil beach-plain of the regional nature domain 'Groenendijk'. The paper describes ...