The Great Marsh: Nature's Flood Insurance How NWF and its partners are bolstering coastal Massachusetts’ best defense against natural disasters
WHEN HURRICANE SANDY pummeled the mid-Atlantic coast in 2012, the damage surpassed $50 billion. With the planet growing warmer and weather more turbulent, we can expect more Sandys to make landfall. What we cannot expect is to keep paying enormous clean-up bills. So the spotlight is turning toward shoreline resilience—and the Great Marsh on the North Shore of Massachusetts lies at the heart of this effort.
Last summer, the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), in partnership with an unprecedented coalition of government agencies and nonprofit groups, launched a multipronged research effort to help safeguard the Great Marsh (map, below). At more than 20,000 acres, it is the largest salt marsh in New England. Internationally recognized as vital habitat for migratory waterfowl, shorebirds and endangered species such as piping plovers, this vast wetland ecosystem extending from Cape Ann to the New Hampshire border includes not just salt marsh but also barrier-island beaches, tidal creeks and rivers.
Backed by nearly $3 million in federal funding, the Great Marsh initiative is one of a suite of climate-change-resilience projects that U.S. government agencies and private groups in a dozen eastern states have organized in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
“Dedicating $100 million in federal funds to increase coastal resiliency through ecosystem-oriented strategies is unprecedented, but the approach is logical,” says Chris Hilke, senior manager of the Federation’s Northeast Climate Adaptation Program. “Can we really expect Sandy-sized disaster relief for the next storm and the storm after that? Instead, the federal government is proactively taking steps to help coastal communities plan ahead.” A key strategy is the strengthening of living shorelines—ecosystems with native plants ranging from aquatic vegetation to dune grass—as a first line of defense against storms and flooding. ...
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