7 ways Hurricane Sandy started a tidal wave of resilience
Excerpt from this story from Mother Nature Network:
It’s been seven years since Hurricane Sandy ransacked the East Coast. And, while bigger storms — with even more devastating impacts — have certainly come along, Sandy was unique because it helped start a movement toward resilience and nature-based solutions.
What does this mean?
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the U.S. Department of the Interior did something unusual; it provided more than $300 million in funding for resilience projects. Not just recovery — the building-back of damaged areas or the clean-up of debris — but the strengthening and restoration of vital natural systems like marshes, wetlands and rivers that can actually help protect people and wildlife from storm impacts.
This work was not limited to national wildlife refuges and parks — more than 160 projects, funded primarily through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), were implemented in collaboration with hundreds of local NGOs and state partners up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
“This really was an investment in the future,” explains Rick Bennett, who coordinated the Hurricane Sandy resilience effort for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “It wasn’t just about fixing what was damaged by Sandy, but figuring out how we can improve environmental conditions so that fish, wildlife and people can be more resilient to flooding and storm impacts.”