Gulf Council Invests Over $400 Million to Support Birds, Wildlife, and Coastal Communities

Have you been lucky enough to witness the goofiness of the Reddish Egret? The way they dance around in shallow water with their wings partially outstretched, a tactic to catch fish known as canopy feeding. I love watching these gorgeous—and eccentric—waterbirds where I live on the Gulf Coast, and I’m excited to close out the year with good news to benefit them and many other species. 

The Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council, one of the entities tasked with restoring the Gulf after the 2010 BP oil spill, recently announced a $403 million investment to restore the Gulf Coast. This investment includes 19 projects to restore coastal habitats, improve water quality, increase community resilience, and support wildlife.

Fifteen years ago, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, unleashing the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Audubon and our supporters across the country worked to pass the RESTORE Act in 2012, creating the council and ensuring that fines from BP and other responsible parties would be used to restore the Gulf Coast. Funded by Clean Water Act penalties, these projects will help birds and other wildlife recover not just from the oil spill, but from decades of erosion and other environmental challenges.

For millions of birds throughout the hemisphere, the Gulf Coast is the last resting place in North America before a nonstop journey to the Caribbean and Central and South America during southward migration. It also provides the first bit of land many of these birds return to after a grueling northern migration, flying thousands of miles. Healthy coastal habitats not only facilitate migrations but mitigate the risk of hurricane storm surge, enhance water quality, and safeguard our natural resources and coastal communities. We need to implement effective restoration projects across the entire ecosystem to maintain these benefits for birds and people.

Several projects will buffer coastal communities and protect birds like Reddish Egrets and Brown Pelicans where they nest and rest from threats like erosion, predators, and human disturbance. Here’s a few examples:

• Texas: Protecting and Restoring Waterbird Rookery Habitat Program & Colonial Waterbird Rookery Island Restoration 

Reddish Egrets were once overhunted for their feathers and thought to be extinct on the Texas coast. Today, Texas is home to the largest colonies of Reddish Egrets in the entire hemisphere, thanks to over a century of stewardship by Audubon’s coastal wardens. With over 600 bird colonies historically located across the state, many on small bay islands made of dredged sediment, this funding is needed to provide these and other coastal birds with healthy nesting habitat and protect them from predators and human disturbance. The larger program will add fresh sediment to address island erosion, build living reefs and breakwaters to protect shorelines, plant vegetation for nest construction, remove invasive plants, and manage predators and reduce human disturbances via public education. The smaller project will support these activities by implementing a science-based prioritization tool to guide restoration efforts to high-impact sites.

• Louisiana: Chandeleur Islands Restoration Project

The Chandeleur Islands are a unique, undeveloped 50-mile chain of barrier islands arching along southeastern Louisiana. Several endangered species of sea turtles and birds nest on the islands, but they’ve lost roughly 89% of their late 1800s historical acreage (11,000 acres down to 1,000 acres) and were devastated by the BP oil spill. Without significant restoration of this island, the islands could disappear in the next two decades, losing valuable habitat and protection for coastal communities.

This project will restore 12,000 acres of island habitat, including beaches and dunes, salt marshes, seagrass meadows, and back barrier island watershed. On the adjacent New Harbor Island, 109 acres of an existing Brown Pelican and Reddish Egret colony will be preserved and expanded, based on the success of recent bird rookery projects in the state like Queen Bess and Rabbit islands. This project is one of many Audubon has advocated for in our Comprehensive Gulf Restoration Plan.

• Alabama: West End Dauphin Island, Alabama Renourishment and Resilience

Dauphin Island is a barrier island off the Alabama coast that provides critical nesting habitat to beach nesting birds like Snowy Plovers and Least Terns. Nesting populations of these species have declined over the years due to human disturbance and predators. This project, working in concert with other restoration and management efforts on the island’s west end, offers meaningful promise for reversing those trends. Restoring 160 acres of beach and dune habitat this project will support nesting Snowy Plovers and provide foraging and stopover habitat for migratory shorebirds.

Together, these projects will strengthen bird populations across the hemisphere by protecting the nesting sites, migratory stopovers, and foraging habitats that birds rely on throughout their annual journeys. You can help:  send a message to the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council today in support of the proposed projects. The deadline for comments is January 2, 2026.