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Tom Duffy

Earlier this month, Atlantic Canadians experienced one of the strongest storms in recent memory to hit the region. Hurricane Dorian made landfall in Nova Scotia as a hurricane-strength post-tropical storm with winds whipping at more than 100 kilometres per hour. Waves wreaked havoc on the shoreline, tearing up wharfs and breakwaters and flooding people’s homes. Campers hunkered down at P.E.I.’s Crystal Beach Campground had to be rescued by first responders when the tide rushed in suddenly, trapping them inside their trailers.

The problem in Atlantic Canada is twofold: Rising global temperatures are melting glaciers and sea ice, pouring an excess of water into Earth’s oceans. And this is being exacerbated by the fact that our region’s landmass is also slowly sinking. During the last ice age, the weight of massive glaciers pushed the centre of the continent down, which forced up land on the coasts. Now that the glaciers have receded, the middle of the continent is popping back up and the coasts are dropping. To top it all off, warmer North Atlantic waters are pulling up stronger tropical storms.

Sea levels have already risen an average of 19 centimetres globally, with 75 per cent of that rise taking place in just the last 40 years. And scientists are predicting that by 2100, they’ll rise at least a metre in Atlantic Canada — that’s even higher than the global average.

In a 2018 report, the Insurance Board of Canada stated that insurance losses from extreme weather in Canada, including flooding, averaged $405 million a year between 1983 and 2008. But since then, those costs have skyrocketed, thanks to more frequent natural disasters, and the average loss annually is now $1.8 billion.

The water is coming, whether we believe it or not. That’s why it’s time to start planning, and using natural solutions for coastal flooding and sea-level rise — especially wetlands like coastal salt marshes.

These workhorse wetlands are natural buffers against rising tides and stormy seas, and extremely effective at protecting the coast from erosion and flooding. As tides bring in sand and soils from offshore, it settles in between the roots and stalks of marsh grasses and forms a kind of fortification against the waves.

Unfortunately, many of these important ecosystems have disappeared across the region. Since the early 1700s, more than half of Nova Scotia’s coastal marshes have been lost to other land uses, leaving much of our Atlantic coastal communities vulnerable.

Places like Sackville, N.B., and Amherst, Hantsport, and even Truro are at risk of serious flooding. And important infrastructure, including the portion of the Trans-Canada Highway and CN Rail line which links New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, could be washed out if we don’t find a solution soon.

Ducks Unlimited Canada looks after thousands of hectares of wetlands near or along Atlantic Canada’s coasts. It was general practice in the 1970s and '80s to convert former salt marshes — which had been drained or cut off from the ocean by dikes — to freshwater wetlands. Waterfowl populations were in decline back then and these restored wetlands became important habitat for species of concern, including American black ducks.

But today, as the ocean eats away at old dikes and salty tides seep into these freshwater marshes, we’re re-evaluating our coastal conservation strategies. The best way to battle rising water, we’ve found, is to embrace it.

That’s why we’ve started restoring coastal marshes across the Maritimes. We’ve let tidewater back into wetlands in places like Kentville, Musquash, N.B., and Rochford Pond in P.E.I. The transformation of these projects to saltmarshes has been striking.

Here, coastal plants like spartina, sea blight and seaside goldenrod are flourishing, helping to create important habitat for wildlife, but also fortifying that natural coastal barrier against higher tides, stronger storms, and rising seas.

As we prepare across the region for more intense storms like hurricane Dorian, we need to ask: how do we adapt to this new reality? We’ve got to think creatively, implement coastal protection policies for what natural shoreline we have left, and restore what we’ve lost.

The ocean is rising. Building sea walls and dikes higher is not going to stop it. We already have solutions; we just need to get out of the way and let wetlands do their work.

Tom Duffy is manager of provincial operations, Atlantic region, Ducks Unlimited Canada.