Caring for coasts in a changing climate: A tale of two shores

Mori Point’s restored coastal prairie boasts a magnificent spring bloom. If you’re lucky, you might spot a migrating whale off the coast or an endangered species darting through new freshwater ponds nearby. For many years, the Parks Conservancy, NPS, and community members have been working to improve sensitive ecosystems and enhance visitor experience.  

Across the Golden Gate Bridge to the north, Bothin Marsh is one of the most vulnerable tidal marsh ecosystems remaining in the San Francisco Bay. It’s also an important transportation and recreation corridor that regularly floods. Through our One Tam partnership, we’ve been working with the community on a plan to adapt this critical place to climate change.

What do these two places have in common? Mori Point and Bothin Marsh are two popular coastal park sites threatened by climate change. As global temperatures rise, sea ice at the poles is melting, and water also expands as it warms. The resulting sea level rise has many impacts to coastal parks and communities – compounded by other climate impacts such as more intense storms. When we look across sites, we can compare how such impacts, and approaches for addressing them, show up.

Hands-on stewardship and habitat restoration with community support remain an important part of caring for these places in a changing climate. We’re strengthening connections to nature and one another in the process. Climate Change Community Engagement Program Manager Nopal Reyes hopes that “…participants walk away not only feeling inspired to become park stewards, but that they feel more connected to the environments that they help take care of. And not just in our park sites, but the environments they go back home to in their daily life.”  

Taking action to help these places, or wherever we are, starts with simply getting curious about what’s around us and noticing change. Join us to practice this with other curious community members!

This story is one in a series that shows how climate action is taking shape in the parks and how community members can help. See our other video about sparking climate action through curiosity and collaboration and support this climate work in the parks.