NFWF, NOAA Announce Record $136 Million for Coastal Resilience
NOAA and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) announced a record investment in projects that will help communities prepare for increasing coastal flooding and more intense storms, while improving thousands of acres of coastal habitats. The funding, in collaboration with the Department of Defense and private sector partners, provides more than $136 million to support 88 natural infrastructure projects in 29 states and U.S. territories. See the full list of grant recipients.
The grants awarded through NFWF’s National Coastal Resilience Fund will leverage more than $94 million in matching contributions to generate a total conservation impact of $230 million. When combined with eight grants announced earlier this year, the new grants will push the fund’s total amount awarded to more than $144 million in 2022. Together, these 96 coastal resilience grants will leverage more than $97 million in matching contributions to generate a total conservation impact of $241 million.
The natural infrastructure projects provide a buffer for communities against increasingly intense storms and flooding, while also improving crucial habitats for fish and wildlife species. The projects will restore and create more than 16,000 acres of coastal habitats, including coastal dunes in Texas and California, saltmarshes in Louisiana and Virginia, oyster reefs along the Atlantic seaboard, and living shorelines to protect military facilities in Mississippi and Florida, among others. Twenty-eight of these grants will fund construction activities for resilience projects, and 60 of them – 29 for planning and 31 for engineering and design – will advance community initiatives, with the ultimate goal of becoming shovel-ready resilience efforts.
This year, with significantly increased funding from Congress through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the fund supported even larger efforts by coastal communities to plan, design and implement resilience projects that will reduce risks from rising sea levels and more intense storms. Recent devastating storm events from Alaska to Puerto Rico and Florida demonstrate the significant need for these types of investments that help communities build resilience to increasing flooding and erosion.
“As communities recover from devastating storm events, it is vital we support nature-based solutions that help communities not only protect against destructive flooding, but also enhance the coastal habitats that are so important to people and wildlife. These grants will provide the critical resources that communities need to prepare for, rebound from, and adapt to the more destructive storms that are impacting our coasts.”
– Jeff Trandahl, executive director and CEO of NFWF
In addition to the $93.7 million provided through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, federal agency funding comes from NOAA and the Department of Defense, and private funding is provided by Shell USA, TransRe and Oxy, with additional funding from the Bezos Earth Fund.
A short video about the NCRF can be found here. A list of the 2022 grants made through the National Coastal Resilience Fund in December is available here.
