Galveston Bay Foundation receives $2.3 million grant to restore marsh along Galveston Bay

  • April 25, 2019
  • News

(HOUSTON, TX – April 25, 2019) – This week, Galveston Bay Foundation received a $2.3
million National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) award to continue to restore and
create marsh habitat in the Dollar Bay/Moses Lake complex in Galveston Bay. The funding
comes to Galveston Bay Foundation through the Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund, a
funding source created from Deepwater Horizon oil spill penalties.

This funding builds upon years of tried and developed techniques for marsh protection and
restoration within the same project area including a 1,600-foot section of rock breakwater
structures constructed in 2002, a 2,400-foot section constructed in 2012, and 1.3-mile
section completed in 2018. Following these projects, Galveston Bay Foundation volunteers
planted smooth cordgrass to reestablish fringing marsh and will continue to do so in this
next phase.

The newly-funded project phase will complete the coastal habitat restoration initiated under
the previously funded phases and leverage $1 million recently awarded under NFWF’s
National Coastal Resilience Fund, for a total investment of more than $5.7 million. Through
the new phase, Galveston Bay Foundation will construct breakwaters to protect and restore
estuarine emergent marsh along 1,500 feet of shoreline and 47 newly created marsh
terraces, which will support emergent marsh vegetation. Construction work will restore 72
acres of intertidal marsh complex and create suitable habitat for oyster growth within the
Dollar Bay/Moses Lake complex in Galveston Bay.

Protection of this critical coastal habitat will contribute to the larger landscape scale
conservation efforts in Galveston Bay, which has lost more than 35,000 acres of intertidal
wetlands since the 1950s.

The project is also supported by: USFWS Coastal Program, Texas GLO, Accenture, NFWF
Gulf Coast Conservation Grants Program, Shell, Ducks Unlimited, Texas Coastal
Conservation Association (CCA) Habitat Today for Fish Tomorrow and CCA Building
Conservation Trust.