See Ya 2024 / Hello 2025: Wetlands Watch Enters Its 25th Year!

Mary-Carson Stiff, Executive Director

As Wetlands Watch prepares to celebrate its 25th year of dedicated service, we reflect on our accomplishments, progress, and the ongoing challenges we face. Despite the escalating threats posed by climate change and its profound impact on our lives, we remain hopeful and steadfast in our pursuit of effective solutions as we embark on the next quarter-century of our mission.

Rising Tides, Rising Urgency

In the realm of climate change, discussions often center on spans of centuries. In Norfolk, however, where Wetlands Watch is headquartered, conversations have narrowed to spans of decades. Sea levels have already risen by 1.5 feet over the past century, and projections suggest that they will rise at twice this rate in half the time. This year, the impacts of our new reality brought us 28 days of nuisance flooding (4.5 feet above MLLW), making it challenging for people to get to work, kids to school, emergency response services to those in need, and our stormwater systems to function effectively. 

Twenty-eight days is a record-breaker, according to our friends at the NOAA-Wakefield Weather Station. As if these impacts weren’t difficult enough, we also experienced 19 consecutive days of +4-feet high tides, tides which also block roads and cause the same transit and safety issues. 

The challenge for all of us in Norfolk, and for everyone throughout Virginia, is that while this was a record breaking year, it is becoming more on trend. Rather they quickly constitute the trendlines for future years. The question all of us in Virginia should be asking is: 

Are our strategies and solutions designed to keep pace with these escalating impacts?

Wetlands at Risk

As sea levels rise, more land becomes inundated, leading to increased flooding and encroachment on shorelines. More land is converted into water, and our wetlands are at the forefront of this transformation. The stark reality is that their growth rate is not keeping pace with sea level rise and this is causing many wetlands to down in place when they cannot migrate landward. Recent projections show that a shocking 89% of Virginia’s tidal wetlands are at risk of disappearing by 2080 unless we take decisive action.

So, with higher and higher water, where do our wetlands go? Do they drown in place because infrastructure stands in their way? Or will we implement comprehensive plans, policies, financial incentives, and legal tools to facilitate their landward migration? This challenge is complex, multi-faceted, and urgent. The only certainty of this work is that delaying action will only allow these challenges to grow more vexing, make them more expensive to solve, and more destructive to our communities.

The good news is that Wetlands Watch has been actively developing strategies and solutions to address these and other challenges in close partnership with a host of nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and community partners. Among our notable achievements in 2024:

Pioneering Rolling Conservation Easements

In January, the Elizabeth River Project’s new headquarters in Norfolk became the site of the country’s first “rolling conservation easement.” Wetlands Watch led the development of this innovative legal tool in collaboration with national experts and significant support from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. The Coastal Virginia Conservancy, an urban land trust based in Norfolk, will enforce the easement, ensuring that wetlands can migrate landward as sea levels rise and that structures on the property are removed when land converts to water. This voluntary tool shifts the responsibility of shoreline adaptation from government decision-makers and the courts to property owners, addressing land conversion proactively.

Legislative Success with the BEACH Act

In November, Congress passed the Bolstering Ecosystems Against Coastal Harm (BEACH) Act, adding approximately 280,000 acres to the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (CBRA), with 96,000 acres in Virginia—95,000 of which are wetlands. Sponsored by Congresswoman Jennifer Kiggans, this legislation received our support through testimony in 2023. The CBRA is a bipartisan statute that protects undeveloped coastal habitats by making them ineligible for certain federal supports, such as flood insurance and road funding. The BEACH Act includes a study on the impact of climate change on CBRA-protected lands, specifically addressing land conversion due to sea level rise. This expansion demonstrates federal recognition of the inherent risks in inhabiting sensitive coastal zones and supports necessary conservation efforts in Virginia.

Launching “Designing Living Shorelines for Sea Level Rise”

In December, Wetlands Watch released a new resource: Designing Living Shorelines for Sea Level Rise in Virginia to help all new erosion control structures protect wetlands from sea level rise and coastal storms.. This new design resource that will help wetlands of today and tomorrow have a better shot of surviving climate impacts.

Collaborating with NASA on Intertidal Zone Mapping

We partnered with the NASA DEVELOP team to project the future locations of intertidal zones as sea levels rise. The project confirmed what we had suspected. Wetlands will be able to migrate landward in areas like Poquoson where there is flat elevation and minimal development. But in regions with higher elevations or significant development, wetlands are likely to drown in place, in accordance with the projections laid out in the Coastal Resilience Master Plan. This partnership was pivotal because the NASA DEVELOP team confirmed that most wetland losses will occur sooner rather than later, highlighting the urgent need for immediate consequential action.

Looking Ahead: Building an Adaptive Future

Urgent action is required to address the loss of Virginia’s wetlands. Upcoming legislation in the 2025 General Assembly aims to build on our progress, similar to the bill introduced in the 2024 session. This new legislation will convene leaders across Virginia to develop a comprehensive strategy for protecting our wetlands from climate change impacts. 

We need to make a plan with actionable steps and accountability to move into an implantation phase on this work. Can we create wetlands migration corridors on lands that make sense to prioritize migration? Maryland has a program called Green Print that maps migration corridors and is working on using land conservation to protect these areas for wetlands to move inland as waters rise. Can we do the same in Virginia? Wetlands Watch helped develop a wetlands migration zone and no mow conditions in a traditional conservation easement recorded on a private residence in Norfolk. Let’s normalize this and make a plan for protecting people and critical infrastructure - which includes our natural infrastructure. We need to do it all together. 

As we enter into our 25th year, Wetlands Watch remains dedicated to addressing the challenges ahead with the urgency and dedication they deserve. Our commitment is unwavering: we will continue to develop and implement innovative strategies to protect Virginia’s wetlands, enhance natural resilience, and bolster community adaptation efforts throughout the Commonwealth. 

Thank you for your continued support as we embark on this pivotal next chapter. Together, we can ensure a resilient and thriving future for Virginia’s precious wetlands, and safeguard everything that they do for our communities.