Deepwater Horizon settlement funds new living shoreline at Fish and Wildlife refuge

In early November 2019, a team of Fish and Wildlife Service biologists and one archeologist and their non-governmental partners met along the shore of Little Lagoon in Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge (Alabama) with the goal of restoring part of the lagoon’s eroding shoreline. The Little Lagoon Living Shoreline Project was approved by the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment Trustees, specifically, the Alabama Trustee Implementation Group, which includes members of the Service’s Gulf Restoration Office, in its second post global settlement restoration plan and the team was more than ready to begin installing native wetland plants. The project is designed to restore a minimum of 2,200 feet of shoreline at an estimated cost of $211,000.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill caused oiling of Bon Secour’s beaches and cleanup activities disturbed both beaches and dunes. The project is one of a handful of projects approved for the refuge to offset the injury to natural resources and reduction in recreational use caused by the spill. This project will help reduce erosion of the lagoon’s shoreline and thereby help improve its water quality.  

The team completed an initial planting of 250 black needle rush (Juncus romarianus) and 250 smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora). These planting will be used to gauge wave action and site conditions and help the experts design a future suitable planting pattern to protect this shoreline from additional erosion. 
Vegetated living shorelines are important first lines of defense that help reduce erosion and maintain or improve the water quality of a water body. At Little Lagoon, the dune vegetation behind the beach is another line of defense against erosion from severe weather. Dune vegetation also provides important habitat for many kinds of wildlife, and in this case, the dunes at Bon Secour provide habitat for the endangered Alabama beach mouse. 

Prior to planting, Gulf Restoration Office Archeologist, Kevin Chapman, looked over the planting area for any signs of cultural material on the surface. After soil was removed, it was put through a quarter-inch sieve to uncover any buried artifacts. 
“The types of cultural material we could have found,” said Chapman, “included prehistoric shell, historic or prehistoric ceramics, stones, glass, or metal fragments. If we’d found any cultural material, I would have stopped work in the area and recorded the discovery.”
According to Service Biologist, Robin Donohue, the team will return in December to install another 500 plants and it will monitor the test plots for plant survival. They will use these data to design a wave attenuation barrier. “We want to put the "softest" barrier that will be effective under the conditions present at the site. That is, we would choose coconut fiber logs over rocks if the wave energy is low enough that the logs would persist,” explained Donohue. 
 
The team will return in March to install 10,000 black needle rush and the barrier. 

The planting team included representatives from the Fish and Wildlife Service, including the refuge; The Nature Conservancy; Mississippi State University; and University of South Alabama.