Great Blue Heron. Photo: Christopher Grau/Audubon Photography Awards
North Carolina Projects

Building Resilient Communities with Nature

Audubon is working with community members and partners in Tyrrell County to find nature-based solutions that address the area's biggest threats to birds and people.

Audubon North Carolina is partnering with stakeholders and residents in Tyrrell County to find nature-based solutions that address flooding, degraded wetlands, and a history of underfunding through the Building Resilient Communities with Nature project.

Flooding as a result of sea level rise, increasingly high tides, and intense storms demolish coastal bird habitat and have all kinds of negative impacts on community roads, yards, houses, and businesses. These long-term issues affect many aspects of community life, including jobs and local economies, housing and infrastructure, recreation opportunities, and the area's beautiful natural wonders and wildlife. This includes impacts to aging water control and management systems that no longer function as designed due at least in part to  the amount of water communities are now dealing with. 

Northern Tyrrell County, including the unincorporated community of Alligator and the Town of Columbia, have been identified by Audubon’s Coastal Carolinas Blueprint as areas where nature-based solutions can improve the lives of birds and people. Through this project, we strive to support our community partners in becoming more resilient and prepared in the face of long-term impacts like sea-level rise, while also safeguarding key bird habitats like marshes, beaches, and barrier islands. 

Project Goals and Objectives 

The main goals of this community-based resilience project include: 

  • Partnering with communities to co-create and prioritize a list of potential nature-based solutions that benefit both people and birds by addressing challenges identified by community members and stakeholders.
  • ​Increasing community capacity to engage in resilience planning. 
  • Foster trust and mutual understanding among organizational partners, local decision makers, and community members and stakeholders. 

The project team will begin by building relationships and facilitating open dialogue with community members and stakeholders in northern Tyrrell County, and engaging with them to gather feedback on and insight into local challenges. Then, the team will compile local social and environmental data to feed into a vulnerability assessment, which will help identify areas that are most vulnerable to community-identified challenges, such as flooding. Finally, the project team will co-develop a list of potential nature-based solutions with community members and stakeholders, which can then be used for future funding applications for project implementation. 

Learn more and get involved with the project

We want to work with community members like you to improve current and future flooding issues while also improving habitat for birds. For example, by restoring barrier islands and marshes, we can build a better buffer against storms and hurricanes while also providing better habitat for birds that rely on these areas.  

Habitat restoration can also provide beneficial economic impacts by supporting fish and shellfish populations and providing recreational opportunities. There are many other mutually beneficial solutions to improve both community resilience and wildlife habitat, and we would like to brainstorm together! 

The project team is committed to engaging the community in every step of the project to ensure that the outcomes will be beneficial for both birds and people. To fulfill this commitment, the project team is attending and hosting a variety of community events and listening sessions to ensure that the voices of community members and stakeholders are heard and understood. Feedback from those events and sessions will be incorporated into the identification and development of nature-based solutions. 

Insight and feedback from community members like you is critical to make sure the end result of the project is as beneficial as possible. We want to meet you and hear from you!

This project is only possible because of the collaborative work of many people and organizations. Project leaders and a Steering Committee help drive the process forward and keep things organized, but at the heart of it all is always the community. The voices, values, and observations from Tyrrell County are what will help shape the project and ensure that community-identified environmental challenges are addressed. Read on to learn more about each part of the project team! 

This project is led by Audubon North Carolina and is supported by the consultants shown below. This team organizes important meetings and events and provides the expertise needed to engage with communities in the project area, collect important social and environmental data, and ultimately co-create a prioritized list of nature-based solutions and initial designs to benefit communities and birds alike. 

The Lead Project Team
Name Organization Expertise
Meg Perry Community engagement and facilitation
Joshua Robinson, Amy Nguyen, Nolan Williams, and Holly Hall Nature-based solutions
Erin Stevens and Maggie Williams Nature-based solutions
Kim Morganello and Lucas Hernandez Nature-based solutions
Andrew Fox and Ram Mohan Nature-based solutions
The Steering Committee

The Building Resilient Communities with Nature Steering Committee consists of residents, governmental organizations, non-profits, community-based leaders, and others who live or work in Tyrrell County, who help guide the direction of the project to co-create outcomes using nature-based solutions that will be most beneficial to surrounding communities. The Steering Committee works closely with the Lead Project Team to assist with engaging communities in the project area to identify the environmental issues affecting them and the locations where nature-based solutions can be applied. 

Name Affiliation
Cat Bowler and Curtis Smalling  Audubon North Carolina
Sherryreed Robinson and Brenda Wynn Alligator Community
Holly White and Helene Wetherington North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency
Stacey Feken Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership
Claire Rapp NC Coastal Federation
Project Funding

This important work is funded by NOAA.

From hurricanes to sea-level rise, climate change poses many threats to coastal birds and communities in North Carolina. Some of the negative effects of climate change on people and their communities include: 

  • Increased sunny day flooding 
  • ​Flood and wind damage to homes, businesses, and roads from hurricanes and coastal storms 
  • Damage to, or disappearance of, important recreation or cultural areas, such as marshes and beaches 
  • Damage to, or disappearance of, salt marshes that serve as nurseries for economically important fisheries, help absorb floodwaters, improve water quality, and reduce wave energy 

Similarly, some of the negative effects of climate change on birds may include: 

  • Direct mortality of adults, chicks, or eggs through flooding, storms, or excess heat 
  • ​Damage to, or disappearance of, important nesting, feeding, or migratory stopover habitats 

Coastal resilience efforts aim to address these problems by better protecting birds and people from climate-related impacts. This may be achieved in a variety of different ways, such as natural habitat protection and restoration and implementation of nature-based solutions. By protecting and working with natural coastal lands and features, communities will be better able to withstand storms, flooding, and sea-level rise, and crucial habitat will be maintained for sensitive coastal bird species. 

To prioritize coastal resilience work in the places that need it most, Audubon North Carolina, in partnership with Audubon South Carolina and Audubon's National Science Division, created the Coastal Carolinas Blueprint.  

This blueprint incorporates social, environmental, and bird data to highlight key coastal areas that are the highest priority to protect and restore. For example, the region around northern Tyrrell County stands out as a high priority landscape where resilience efforts stand to greatly benefit people and birds. 

One of the main objectives of this project is to create a list of prioritized nature-based solutions that have been co-created by the project team, community members, and stakeholders. Read on to find out more about what nature-based solutions are and how they can benefit coastal communities and birds alike! 

What are natural and nature-based solutions? 

Solutions to environmental issues tend to exist along a gradient. At one end is "hard" or "grey" infrastructure, such as pipes, pumps, or storm barriers like rockwalls or bulkheads. These hard infrastructure solutions are often detrimental to wildlife and the environment.  

On the other hand, natural and nature-based solutions, or "green" infrastructure, help improve ecosystems in both rural and urban areas, addressing problems from sea level rise, flooding, and extreme weather. These solutions protect habitats, support wildlife, create green spaces, and manage resources like water and food. By working with nature and human-made systems, natural and nature-based solutions offer lasting social, economic, and environmental benefits. 

"Green" or "nature-based" infrastructure solutions tend to work alongside, or imitate, natural features. Examples of green infrastructure solutions include rain gardens, bioswales, and living shorelines. 

"Natural" infrastructure refers to features that are already present in our environment, such as marshes and forests, which provide us with many benefits like protection from coastal storms, water quality improvement, recreation, and provision of wildlife habitat.