Newborough is a wonderful wilderness area to explore, on the South Western extremity of the island. The main access route is via the A4080 from Llanfairpwll, via Brynsiencyn. The Countryside Council for Wales manages the area as a National Nature Reserve. The adjacent Newborough Forrest, though not part of the NNR has the main car park used by visitors and access to the beach at Llanddwyn Bay, which is especially popular with holiday and day visitors.

 In the thirteenth century, the Newborough area was a region of rich farmlands and a prosperous town. Newborough was populated by the townspeople who were evicted from Llanfaes, in the north of the island, by Edward I. However, in the fourteenth century a series of extremely violent storms buried a large portion of this area under sand dunes. The fears of the residents that the dunes would completely swallow the town prompted Queen Elizabeth I to enact a law protecting the marram grass, the roots of which help to stabilize the dunes. This stopped the advance of the dunes and provided raw material for a new industry in the town, the weaving of the marram grass leaves to form mats.

Rabbits soon colonized the dunes, giving the area the name Newborough Warren. This provided the residents with another valuable resource, as over 100,000 rabbits a year were taken from the warren. The reduction of the rabbit population through forestry plantation and the myxomytosis epidemic of the 1950's allowed the vegetation on the dunes to spread.

Today, besides the marram grass the warren is vegetated by a wide range of interesting plants. On the dunes themselves, plants such as dune pansies, sea spurge and sand cat's-tail grow alongside the marram grass. Between the dunes, in the marshy hollows called the slacks, a rich flora can be found composed of creeping willow and a variety of orchids including the marsh orchid, along with butterwort grass of parnassus and yellow bird's-nest.

Birds common to the dunes include herring gulls, oystercatchers, lapwings, curlew, skylarks and meadow pipits. The dunes are also home to an abundance of toads and lizards as well as insects.