The Sultana Education Foundation (SEF)  announced that the National Park Service Chesapeake Gateways program has provided $200,000  in funding in support of the Lawrence Wetlands Preserve – a new urban nature center the  Foundation is developing in Chestertown, Maryland. This award brings the National Park Service’s  investment in the project to $250,000, as well as the contribution of considerable technical and  planning support. When open to the public in 2023, the Lawrence Preserve will function, in  association with the Holt Education Center, as a National Park Service partner visitor contact  station on Maryland’s Upper Eastern Shore for information, education, and to get official  Chesapeake passports stamped.  

Photo by Sam Shoge

Established with the help of a $1 million lead gift from philanthropist Michael Lawrence, the 8.5- acre Lawrence Wetlands Preserve is centrally located in walking distance to Chestertown’s historic  downtown and Sultana’s LEED Platinum Holt Education Center. While diminutive in size, the  Lawrence Preserve boasts diverse habitats, including woodlands, non-tidal marsh, shrublands,  warm grass meadows, swampland, and a freshwater pond draining into the Chester River. The  Preserve’s “watershed in miniature” will provide an ideal setting for students to learn how land use  impacts the health of the Chesapeake Bay. The Preserve will also be accessible to the public,  providing a new natural space in Chestertown’s growing downtown. 

“We are honored by the NPS Chesapeake Gateways’ support and commitment and are proud to  have the Park Service as a partner for the Lawrence Wetlands Preserve,” said Sultana Education  Foundation President, Drew McMullen. ‘Our relationship with the National Park Service spans two  decades, and they have provided initial support for many of our core public and educational  programs.”

Photo by Tyler Campbell

“NPS Chesapeake Gateways applauds Sultana Education Foundation’s vision to create a new  outdoor Chesapeake watershed classroom for students that also serves as an oasis of green space for the Chestertown and surrounding community,” said Wendy O’Sullivan, Superintendent of the  NPS Chesapeake Office. “The Lawrence Preserve is the latest example of how the Sultana team is a  leader and model for place-based environmental education and Chesapeake storytelling on  upper Eastern Shore.” 

“We are fortunate to have the Sultana Education Foundation in our community and we eagerly  await the completion of the Lawrence Wetlands Preserve. We see this new facility as a tremendous asset for young people in our area and for our community as a whole,” commented  Chestertown Mayor, David Foster.  

Photo by Tyler Campbell

The Park Service is one of several major organizational partners supporting the Lawrence Preserve,  including the Stories of the Chesapeake Heritage Area, the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority, the  John Ben Snow Memorial Trust, the Indian Point Foundation, the Shared Earth Foundation, the  Gosnell Foundation, and the Schumann Charitable Trust. 

Work on Sultana’s Lawrence Preserve began in June with the installation of a site-wide trail  network and extensive landscape engineering. This fall, the Foundation planted 400+ trees to  create a woodland buffer around the property’s border, as well as two warm grass pollinator  meadows. Development of the property will continue in 2022 with the construction of a 1,200  square foot nature center building allowing the Preserve to operate on a year-round basis, as well  as a system of wetland pedestrian boardwalks. 

Tangier Island, in Virginia’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay, once had eight ridges, with distinct towns on each. But with every heavy storm, the once-sturdy island lost more ground. By the 1930s, only three communities remained, all on ridges separated by bridges over a marsh. Photo by Dave Harp

Rising seas are engulfing Tangier Island so quickly that most of its remaining residents may be forced to flee the low-lying Chesapeake Bay community during the next decade, according to a bleak new assessment published Nov. 8 in Frontiers of Climate.

The rest won’t be too far behind — staying until 2053, it predicts.

“The town of Tangier’s citizens will join the growing numbers of humanity forced to relocate due to climate change, becoming climate change refugees,” wrote the authors of the peer-reviewed study. “That this is happening such a short distance away” — 93 miles — “from the capital of the USA in Washington, DC, and proceeding apace with little aid, despite all the media attention Tangier Island and the town have had, should alarm us all.”

Tangier’s options are few and hugely expensive, the report suggests. A large-scale effort to save the island, the paper estimates, would cost $250–$350 million. Fighting sea level rise would entail wrapping jetties around erosion-prone shorelines, raising the town’s elevation by 9 feet with sand dredged from the bottom of the Bay and upgrading the community’s plumbing and electricity networks, the report asserts.

The only other alternative — abandoning the island and relocating the town’s 400 residents to the mainland — would come with a $100–$200 million price tag.

Rising seas, land subsidence and erosion have claimed approximately two-thirds of the Tangier Island system’s land mass since 1850. Dave Harp

The study adds new urgency to the debate over the fate of the tiny island, which has shrunk to little more than a few brushstrokes of sand and marsh in Virginia’s portion of the Bay. Its primary author is David Schulte, the veteran U.S. Army Corps of Engineers marine biologist whose 2015 study helped put Tangier at the center of a political fight over the reality of climate change.

Many Tangier residents doubt that the climate is changing despite strong evidence that rising seas and stronger storms are scouring the island away at an alarming rate, or they point to erosion as a much greater concern. Many agree with former President Trump’s assertion during a famous 2017 phone call with the town’s mayor that they have nothing to worry about from sea level rise.

A boat rests in the grasses of a Tangier Island inlet. Dave Harp

Schulte’s 2015 study had suggested otherwise — in stark terms that captured headlines across the country and resounded all the way to the White House. Using historic maps and aerial photos, Schulte and his team found that two-thirds of the island had disappeared since 1850, leaving just more than 700 acres of total land. Depending on how much and how quickly seas rise, they calculated, residents would likely have to abandon the town within 25-50 years.

Schulte’s latest examination of Tangier’s climate fate accelerates that timeline slightly.

The study predicts that the West Ridge, one of the town’s three populated “ridges,” will convert to wetlands by 2033. That will be followed by the Main Ridge in 2035 and the Canton Ridge in 2051.

“It makes the situation on Tangier even more dire,” Schulte said.

Although many Tangier residents reject the scientific consensus that humans are causing the climate to change, their actions suggest they are heeding the threat nonetheless. Its population has plummeted from a peak of 1,100 people in the early 1900s to 436 as of 2020. During that span, the speed of that decline has been in almost lockstep with the loss of dry land on the island, the authors found.

Based on those trends, the report predicts that the last residents will leave Tangier by 2053, two years after its last wisps of uplands — dry enough to support homes and businesses — are projected to convert to wetlands.

The island is renowned for its soft-shell crab fishery and supports a handful of restaurants and bed and breakfasts. But its remote location 13 miles southwest of Crisfield, MD, with no road access to the mainland, has long stifled economic growth.

Cindy Wheatley is a town council member on Tangier and longtime resident. Half of her house is still without power after an Oct. 29 nor’easter caused widespread coastal flooding around the upper half of the Bay. The water rose to within inches of her elevated door sill, but lower-lying neighbors weren’t so lucky, she said.

“We’ve been living here since 1979, and we’ve never seen it that high,” Wheatley said. “This one got into people’s houses that never got in them before.”

She doesn’t put much faith in climate forecasts, she said. Powerful storms will erode the island’s shoreline, but the damage never seems to last for long as far as she can tell.

“It’s called shifting sands,” Wheatley said. “It goes away, and it comes back.”

Schulte’s new study was not under the auspices of the Army Corps of Engineers. He conducted the research independently, he said, as part of his doctoral work at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. It was a family affair. His son, a high school senior named Zehao Wu, is listed as the other author.

Despite the existential threat it faces from climate change, Tangier has received little state or federal help to keep itself above water. The only significant public works project in recent years — a $2.6 million jetty completed last year on the northwest side of the island — will help reduce localized erosion, Schulte said. But it won’t stop rising seas from swallowing the land, he added.

The tone of the study toggles between alarm and frustration.

“Soon,” Schulte and Wu wrote, “the rest of the Town of Tangier will be uninhabitable due to sea level rise. The question we pose for policymakers is: ‘What will it take for you to act?’”

For more on Tangier Island, listen to Chesapeake Uncharted, a Bay Journal podcast available here. 

By Jeremy Cox

The Eastern Shore Land Conservancy announced the selection of their new president on Saturday at their annual fundraising event, the Party to Preserve, hosted at the historic Hermitage in Centreville. Saturday’s announcement comes as no surprise, as current President Rob Etgen announced earlier this year that he would be retiring, having served ESLC since its founding in 1990.  

Steven Kline

Steven Kline was approved as ESLC’s next president by the organization’s Board on Thursday, October 28 and will step in to the position in December. Kline built his career in conservation politics, having worked with multiple organizations dedicated to preserving natural resources, most recently serving more than 10 years with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

“My family and I feel honored to have led this great organization for 31 years,” said Etgen. “We are pleased to have contributed to the preservation of the precious quality of life on the Eastern Shore. We feel thankful to staff, donors, and board members for their incredible support.”

“We thank Rob Etgen for his incredible service to Eastern Shore Land Conservancy over the past 30 years,” said ESLC’s Chair of the Board of Directors, Bill D’Alonzo. “We welcome Steve Kline to lead ESLC, to continue and enhance the incredible legacy left by Rob.”

“I feel very humbled and grateful to be entrusted with this position with ESLC,” said Kline. “I’m excited about the opportunity to build upon the strong foundation laid out by Rob Etgen and to continue to achieve the preservation of natural land and the betterment of towns on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.”

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s (CBF) Board of Trustees has selected Hilary Harp Falk , a proven expert in large-scale ecosystem restoration, leading organizational change and coalition building, to be CBF’s next President & CEO. She will succeed William C. Baker, who began working for CBF as an intern in 1976 and has been President & CEO of the organization since 1981.

Hilary Harp Falk

Falk comes to CBF from the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), where she was their Chief Program Officer leading and integrating all national and regional programs while serving as strategic advisor to the CEO.  Previously, Falk held the position of NWF Vice President for Regional Conservation, where she was responsible for leading the organization’s seven regional offices with a focus on regional growth and strategic plan implementation.

Falk’s rise to national conservation leadership also included serving as NWF’s Regional Executive Director for the Mid-Atlantic and Director of the Choose Clean Water Coalition, creating a coalition of more than 200 advocacy organizations working together to protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay.

“Today, we stand at a crossroads for Bay restoration. Finishing the work of Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint by 2025 and leaving a restored Bay to our children and grandchildren is possible. But it is not certain,” Falk said. “I am humbled and honored to now be charged with leading this prestigious institution. Together, we will build a future that brings people together for clean water and a healthy Bay.”

CBF has been championing the science-based Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint to achieve pollution reductions necessary and ensure clean water for future generations. And it’s working. Less pollution is entering our waterways and underwater dead zones are shrinking. But the system remains dangerously out of balance and significant challenges remain including the perils of climate change and states behind schedule on necessary pollution reductions. Currently, CBF is suing EPA in federal court for not holding the states, particularly Pennsylvania, accountable for their clean water commitments.

“Hilary Falk is a proven leader. She got her start at CBF over 20 years ago, but she has had Bay water in her veins from a much earlier age.  Hilary has the experience and wisdom necessary to continue the work that CBF launched 55 years ago to save this national treasure,” said CBF President William C. Baker. “Enforcing the Clean Water Act and investing in the pollution-reduction practices that provide clean water and mitigate climate change will be paramount to CBF success going forward.”

Falk is a champion for women’s leadership and advancing equity in the conservation movement. She was a 2016-2017 fellow with the International Women’s Forum and co-chaired the National Wildlife Federation’s Women in Conservation Leadership Advisory Council. Inside NWF, Falk led the implementation of the organization’s foundational 2018 strategic plan and was a champion for a more equitable and inclusive workplace.

“Strong leadership skills, a commitment to equity in the environmental movement, and a devotion to following the science to restore the health of the Chesapeake Bay made Hilary Harp Falk the clear choice for leading CBF during this critical time,” said CBF Chair of the Board of Trustees Elizabeth Oliver-Farrow. “I look forward to working with Hilary to achieve the goals we all share – abundant wildlife, clean water, and vibrant communities enjoying the benefits of a saved Bay.”

“Our national search looked at more than a hundred candidates,” said Harry S. Gruner, the CBF Board member chairing the search committee. “Ms. Falk’s commitment and experience placed her head and shoulders above the other candidates.”

Falk began her career in environmental conservation as an intern with CBF in 1997. Upon graduation from Franklin and Marshall College in 2001, she returned to CBF and spent three years at CBF’s Port Isobel Island Education Center teaching students of all ages – children, teachers, farmers, and decision-makers – about the Bay and its ecologically sensitive island communities.

“My lifelong interest and commitment to conservation began by assisting my father, a professional photographer, on assignment. Although he took a diversity of photos, his favorite ones – and mine – were on the Chesapeake Bay trekking through soft shorelines and messing about in boats. I fell hard in love with the Bay at a young age and knew then that I would spend my life protecting the environment,” Falk said.

Falk lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with her husband and two children. Her first day on the job at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation will be Jan. 3, 2022.