There’s an urgent need for real solutions that build climate resilience and reduce dangerous climate impacts in the future.
On October 27, 2016, the Earth Foundation will break ground on a bold new vision to address climate change: the restoration of one million acres of degraded land in the lower part of the Mississippi River Basin—a vast ecosystem once so rich in biological and environmental resources that it was compared to the Amazon Rainforest.
Our initiative to restore one million acres in “North America’s Amazon” will help the U.S. meet national climate targets, while protecting people and economic infrastructure along the Gulf Coast from the threat of the increasingly harsh storms and floods that have already turned some residents into America’s first climate refugees.
We will break ground on this ambitious mission by restoring 4,000 acres in Louisiana’s Pointe-aux-Chenes Bald Cypress Forest Wetland, an important ecosystem that serves as the last line of natural defense against storms and floods for 200,000+ people in the Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes.
This region is also home to threatened and endangered species, commercial and recreational fisheries, and a rich diversity of wildlife and birds.
Photo of upper Mississippi River near Dubuque, Iowa by Storm Cunningham