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03/19/2019 12:00 AMThe town of Old Saybrook, together with Old Saybrook Land Trust and other partners, is pursuing the purchase of 11 acres at 40 Ayers Point Road, a plot of wetlands described as crucial to migratory bird populations and other environmental concerns. A grant proposal submitted last month seeks $1 million in U.S. Fish and Wildlife Servie funds for this parcel as well as nine others for a total of roughly 1,200 acres in Connecticut.
“The Ayers Point [land] is important because it lies within the Connecticut River Valley and the lower Connecticut River, which is a stopover as [birds] migrate north and south,” said Min Huang, migratory bird program leader at the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP).
The purchase is also touted for not only preserving current marshland, but for preserving upland area that when sea levels rise can become marshland. The process of marshland moving inland as current marshes are submerged is called marsh migration.
Huang said that Ayers Point is one of a “very few spots due to the topography [that] lend themselves to marsh migration. As sea levels continue to rise, [existing wetlands] will creep into upland areas.”
Connecticut’s coastal areas are heavily populated, so it is difficult to find space to allow the inevitable migration of marshlands to occur. The Ayers Point Road parcel abuts the Ferry Point Marsh Wildlife Area.
“A marsh is a marsh because it gets inundated by water twice a day or so,” Huang said.
As the wetlands migrate, vegetation adapted to marsh conditions will take over the plants now located on the uplands.
Climate change is a primary cause of this change.
“The water’s rising and it’s forecast to come up three feet in the next 75 years,” Huang said.
“Our agency is working with municipalities to really start thinking about this,” he continued. “You can’t armor everything. You can’t just build walls. People will have to make tough choices. It’s happening all over North America. The water is rising.”
North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) grants were originally designed to fund conservation of wetland habitats for waterfowl. While they still do so, the focus has expanded to all migratory birds. In addition, preservation of wetlands is now understood to improve water and air quality, reduce coastal erosion, and aid flood control efforts.
While NAWCA grants require applicants to provide at least a one-to-one match for requested funds, a proposal will not be competitive unless the applicant demonstrates it can provide at least two times the requested grant amount, Huang explained. So, for a $1 million request, which is the maximum grant amount, the applicant should demonstrate it has at least $2 million in available funding. Huang composed and submitted the grant proposal.
According to Old Saybrook First Selectman Carl P. Fortuna, Jr., $42,000 will come from the town’s Open Space Fund and the Old Saybrook Land Trust is raising additional funds. The Groton Open Space Association, the Avalonia Land Conservancy, the Opacum Land Trust, and the DEEP River Land Trust are additional funding partners on the grant application.
The funding question is one of seven critical categories that will determine the proposal’s ranking, Huang explained. Other questions ask about waterfowl, non-waterfowl, and endangered species that depend on the region, how the proposal aligns with U.S. Fish & Wildlife regional priorities, and other issues, all of which require careful documentation. Information on the NAWCA website itself describes the application process as “rigorous.”
The application process allows those seeking funding to employ an arcane system of “banking” matching funds from previous land purchases. When partner funds exceed the required 1:1 match, those excess contributions may be held over and applied to a future land purchase.
“There’s banked match money from other purchases that were made previously—it’s kind of like a shell game, the way match works,” Huang said. “From the last grant [the Connecticut Coastal Initiative II, which was awarded a NAWCA grant of nearly $1 million] we had about $5 million [in local funding] and we used about $2 million of that for this current grant.”
Successful NAWCA grantees will likely be notified in late summer.