An Innovative New Tool in Wetlands Migration Efforts
Wetlands are complex, dynamic, and endlessly productive ecosystems that serve as transition spaces–and to a certain extent, hinge points–between the terrestrial and aquatic worlds. They define areas that are constantly changing. Wetlands recede in droughts and expand in times of heavy rainfall. Along the coast, they embrace and release water with the tides.
For hundreds of thousands of years, Virginia’s wetlands have proven remarkably resilient to changes in sea level. As the sea level dropped, they migrated seaward to seize ground that was closer to the water. As the seas rose, they migrated landward to escape drowning.
The Challenge. The ability of Virginia’s wetlands to adapt to changing conditions is impressive, but scientific observers project that they will not be able to adapt to twenty-first century conditions without substantial aid. Driving the crisis is the fact that seas are rising faster than at any other time in the last twenty-seven centuries. The sea level at Sewell’s Point in Norfolk has risen 1.5 feet in the last hundred years, and is projected to rise another 1.5 feet by 2050.
One challenge is that Virginia wetlands are having to migrate so quickly that they are having a difficult time producing enough organic material in their migration paths to sustain themselves. Wetlands need to lay down organic infrastructure in new areas as they migrate, and they are struggling to keep ahead of rising seas.
The most formidable challenge confronting Virginia’s wetlands, however, does not concern the rate of migration but rather the paucity of available migration paths. As Virginia’s wetlands fight their rearguard action against rising seas, their migration is being cut off by seawalls, bulwarks, dikes, developed residential property, and other human infrastructure along the shoreline. For the first time in their long history, Virginia wetlands have nowhere to go as the sea level rises, and risk drowning in place.
What makes the crisis so difficult is that it seems a direct consequence of dreams and desires that have long been associated with the American spirit. As Ishmael relates in the opening chapter of Moby Dick,
Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water...
If the percentage of Americans who live by the coast is any indication of their attraction to water, Ishmael may be on the right track. Forty percent of all Americans live along the coast, and in Virginia, the percentage is even higher, with six of every ten residents living in the Tidewater region.
Acquiring easy access to the ocean may come as a relief to Virginians as they seek out the hidden, magical places to which Ishmael refers, but it comes at a high cost: heavy development along the coast.
In the present era of rising seas, this puts Virginia’s wetlands in an unenviable position. With water rising at their backs, and human development at their front, wetlands will need substantial aid if they are to escape suffocation. In this era of rising oceans and heavy coastal development, wetlands are truly caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Innovative Solutions. Wetland Watch is thrilled to announce an innovative way to help wetlands migrate: a new kind of conservation easement that is tied to sea level rise. For the last three years, Wetlands Watch has worked with the Elizabeth River Project (ERP) and the Coastal Virginia Conservancy (CVC) to design and implement the first-in-the-nation conservation easement that uses future sea levels to trigger conservation actions that facilitate wetlands migration: a rolling conservation easement.
The new easement centers on the Elizabeth River Project’s property in Norfolk, Virginia. The organization built its new Resilience Lab on high flood risk property because their ambitious restoration efforts and educational programming required easy access to the Elizabeth River. ERP understood that the property would eventually be overtaken by rising seas, and committed to vacate the property and allow the wetlands to migrate fully onto it once operations became unsafe. But the organization lacked a formal legal agreement that ensured that their plans would be carried out.
Because there was no legal precedent for a conservation-centered agreement tied to future sea levels, Wetlands Watch volunteered to design a new kind of conservation easement that changes restrictions with changes in our climate. Working with land conservation professionals, sea level rise adaptation professionals, coastal engineers, and legal experts from across the country, we created a way for the Elizabeth River Project to ensure the safe, managed migration of wetlands onto their property.
Conservation easements are voluntary legal agreements between a landowner and a land trust that permanently limit land use in order to protect its conservation values. Unlike traditional conservation easements, rolling easements provide for a more flexible approach to conservation by allowing the terms of the agreement to change depending upon developing circumstances on the ground. For instance, dormant requirements in traditional rolling conservation easements might be triggered by changes in species habitat, the success or failure of stewardship actions, advances in technology, or changes in government regulations.
Wetlands Watch designed a first-of-its-kind rolling conservation easement that uses future sea levels as legal mechanisms. The first formal trigger will be met when sea levels have risen by about three feet beyond what they are today, and the second, when sea levels have risen by another foot. When these triggers are activated (in approximately 2065 and 2075, respectively), the Elizabeth River Project promises to:
assess wetlands health and buffer migration capacity and perform maintenance on the Property to ensure water quality function, habitat provision, species health, and wetlands migration is maintained, while ensuring unimpeded wetlands migration onto the Property.
The final trigger, the “Deconstruction Trigger,” is projected to occur in or around 2085 when sea levels are about five feet higher than they are today. This will activate a clause that will require the Elizabeth River Project to discontinue the use of the property, remove buildings and structures, and return the property “to a condition where wetlands and shoreline buffer plant species can migrate onto the entirety of the Property unimpeded.”
The Elizabeth River Project in this way is leading the charge in wetlands migration efforts. Not satisfied simply to educate the public on best restoration practices, they are committed to the continued employment of these practices, even if it means vacating their own property and research center to provide a home for migrating wetlands.
The Coastal Virginia Conservancy is likewise showing extraordinary leadership in this project. They are legally responsible for enforcing this first-of-its-kind agreement, and without them, this wouldn’t be possible.
Looking Ahead. We are honored to have had the opportunity to work with such dedicated partners on this project, and it is our hope that this innovative use of rolling easements will help serve as a blueprint for how Virginia safeguards wetland migration paths over the next pivotal decades.
On the matter of charting a way forward when rising seas threaten human structures, it is perhaps understandable that our first instinct is to defend what we have built. Even wetlands engage in defensive actions, after all, repairing themselves after storms, droughts, and other significant weather events.
Sea level rise is not a weather event, however. It is a global climate effect at least a century in the making, and is not something that can be stopped through expensive actions like coastal armoring. The indiscriminate construction of expensive seawalls, dikes, and pumping stations might save a property for a decade or two, but what then? Seas will continue to rise, more expensive armoring actions will be required to keep up, and all this does is end up encouraging the hazardous habitation of lands below sea level.
Rolling conservation easements that are designed to protect wetlands as they migrate also help facilitate the orderly landward relocation of roads, and keep houses, families, and expensive community infrastructure safely off the floodplain as the seas rise. Not only does this reduce significant hazards to public health and safety, but it also relieves local governments of the escalating costs associated with fighting a losing battle with the sea.
The fact of the matter is that human settlements, unlike wetlands, do not flourish in places that regularly flood with water and release it. Migrating to higher ground is something that both wetlands and human beings will need to accomplish in the decades to come.
We believe that there is real truth to Ishmael’s suggestion that the roving explorations of Virginia’s waterways and shorelines is fundamental to the American experience. At Wetlands Watch, we work by the water, and in some ways can’t get enough of it.
But we should not allow our love for the water to beguile us into thinking that we can hold back the sea. We need to think strategically. At the end of the day, we should not allow our desire to be close to the water destroy the natural ecosystems that drew us there in the first place.
Eric Caldwell
Note: The Virginia Resilience Master Plan predicts that without intervention, Virginia will lose 89% of its remaining wetlands by 2080.