Defending the Gulf With Nature
TNC and the U.S. Air Force team up to fund nature-based solutions to coastal risk at Tyndall Air Force Base.
In October 2018, Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 storm, brought catastrophic destruction to Tyndall Air Force Base in Bay County, Florida. There was significant flooding, and nearly every building was damaged almost beyond repair.
In the years since then, the U.S. Air Force has continued to rebuild Tyndall while working closely with The Nature Conservancy and its partners to transform the base into a model for how military installations and coastal communities can enhance shoreline resilience.
TNC’s work at Tyndall advances sustainable, nature-based practices that break wave energy, absorb floodwaters in vulnerable areas, reduce erosion, protect hundreds of acres of land and coastline, support wildlife and expand recreational opportunities for those on base.
TNC’s nature-based solutions include the construction of a living shoreline, an oyster reef breakwater, a submerged shoreline stabilization project and seagrass habitat enhancements.
Recovery and Reconstruction
In the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, the extent of the damage at Tyndall was so severe that Congress paused to consider if the base—with an estimated $5 billion price tag in damages—should even be rebuilt.
Today, however, the reconstruction efforts continue with nature-based solutions to enhance coastal resilience as top of mind. A partnership with The Nature Conservancy is facilitating their execution.
“The plan is for Tyndall to be 'the installation of the future,'" says Jeff DeQuattro, TNC’S director of restoration in the Gulf. Working with partners at the base and across TNC, DeQuattro is leading the efforts to buffer Tyndall against sea level rise and future storms.
Tyndall is invaluable for U.S. military operations. “Tyndall serves as a key strategic asset not only to the Air Force, but to the nation as a whole,” says Garey Payne, Tyndall’s Coastal Resilience Program Manager. “Geographically, the direct access to the Gulf to train and certify U.S. military pilots on a myriad of weapon systems is virtually unmatched elsewhere around the globe. Additionally, as the home to three newly assigned F-35 combat-ready squadrons, the Air Force’s Air Battle Management schoolhouse, and the Air Force Civil Engineer Center, missions all around Tyndall have global impact to the United States’ strategic priorities.”
In 2024, Tyndall was honored with a Federal Government Sustainability Award, which represents how far the partners have come since the devastating storm.
Since 2021, TNC has utilized $7.8 million from the Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI) Program, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and U.S. Department of the Treasury (Bay County RESTORE Act) to complete the data collection, modeling, engineering design and permitting of four keystone coastal resilience projects at Tyndall Air Force Base. In 2025, 17 additional projects were identified to scale up nature-based solutions along Tyndall’s more than 40 miles of coastline. Starting in 2026, TNC will construct an oyster reef breakwater, the first nature-based solution to be implemented at Tyndall.
Before Hurricane Michael, about 26,000 people relied on the base daily, and 37 percent of the economic activity in Bay County was related to Tyndall.
An Ecological Treasure
Ecologically, Tyndall is also a treasure. It sits on a peninsula with 40 miles of shoreline on the Gulf and clusters of barrier islands. Its 29,000 acres of longleaf pine, beach dunes, grasslands, wetlands and brackish estuaries are a swathe of biodiversity, hosting everything from red-cockaded woodpeckers to diamondback terrapins, oysters, crabs and all manner of fish and other marine life.
Though nothing will fully protect any coastal community from another Category Five hurricane, Tyndall is rebuilding with elevated and strengthened buildings—examples of gray infrastructure solutions—and by investing in green solutions as well.
“Hurricane Michael gave Tyndall a clean slate, and they can build in the most up-to-date way,” says retired Brigadier General Bob Barnes. Barnes, an expert in how extreme weather affects national security, serves as an advisor and facilitator for TNC’s partnership with the U.S. military.
By the Numbers
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$15.1M
federal award funding for nature-based solution projects
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37%
economic activity in Bay County
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40
miles of shoreline on the Gulf Coast
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29,000
acres of biodiverse habitat
Coastal Resilience through Living and Submerged Shorelines, Oyster Reefs and Marshes
A living shoreline may include structures composed of natural materials, such as rock, and often incorporates native plants to stabilize eroding coastlines. Sited adjacent to the Tyndall primary airfield, fuel port and maintenance areas in East Bay, the living shoreline project will create four submerged breakwater structures using natural limestone materials suitable for oyster recruitment.
“As soon as we put something in the water, it will immediately attract animals,” says DeQuattro, “and if the science and engineering are correct, over time, it will begin providing habitat for things like crabs and fish on its own rather than simply being an attractor.” The living shoreline is expected to reduce coastal erosion along 1,200 feet of shoreline and protect 19 acres of adjacent seagrass and sandy littoral habitat.
The oyster reef breakwater project will create six submerged breakwater structures adjacent to Tyndall’s drone runway in East Bay. Like the living shoreline, the oyster reef breakwater will dampen wave energy, reduce erosion along 2,000 feet of vulnerable Tyndall coastline and enhance 30 acres of estuarine habitat.
While the living shoreline will act as a general attractor for marine life, the oyster reef breakwater shape is specifically designed to provide habitat attractive to oysters. “The Gulf is probably the last place in the world that has a somewhat healthy population of oysters," DeQuattro says, explaining that 85 percent of oyster populations have been lost worldwide, but the Gulf still retains 50 percent, making it an ideal place for restoration work. “It's hard to restore oysters in a place where you don't have any oysters left,” he says, “but here, if you build the right structure, they will come."
Oysters provide vital ecosystem services, such as water filtration, and their reefs provide a refuge for many other invertebrate and fish species. “Because oysters are ecosystem engineers who build and replenish their own habitat, oyster reefs can readily adapt to changing coastal conditions,” says TNC’s Gulf Program Project Manager Katie Konchar. “This is a key characteristic for nature-based solutions employed along the Tyndall Air Force Base coastline.”
The shoreline stabilization project will create a network of 12 subtidal breakwater structures designed to reduce wave energy and protect 3,500 feet of Tyndall coastline from ongoing erosion. The project is located in St. Andrew Sound, a dynamic coastal area vital for both training and recreation on the Gulf side of the base, where wave and wind energy and currents are especially strong. This area, known as Buck Beach, has already lost roughly 60 acres of beach, seagrass and other habitats to erosion.
The submerged shoreline, which will double as a habitat for fish, crabs and other marine life, will allow sand to accumulate and is expected to enhance 30 acres of beach mouse and estuarine habitats.
In conjunction with the submerged shoreline stabilization project, TNC also is working toward the enhancement of five acres of lost seagrass habitat at the St. Andrew Sound project site. Seagrass habitat enhancements involve the installation of bamboo stakes to deter seagrass herbivores and the potential for seagrass transplantation.
Nature-based Coastal Resilience Solutions In Practice
Nature-based coastal resilience solutions have been successful elsewhere; in 2000, Project Green Shores in Pensacola created a series of offshore limestone, recycled concrete and preformed concrete breakwaters, as well as five islands made from 35,000 cubic yards of sand and marsh grass. Since then, Hurricane Ivan (Category Four) and Hurricane Dennis (Category Three) both made landfall, and the areas behind these installations sustained less damage than areas without living shorelines. A TNC study after Hurricane Michael found that vegetated shorelines in the communities near Tyndall held up to a named storm just as well as hardened structures like bulkheads or seawalls—while costing much less to repair.
There has never been a large-scale coastal resilience project at a base like what is happening at Tyndall now. TNC’s federal grant awards have been provided by the Readiness and Environmental Protection (REPI) Program and U.S. Treasury Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities, and Revived Economies (RESTORE) of the Gulf Coast States Act settlement to Bay County, Florida. The primary mission of the program is to protect the military’s ability to test and train—a goal that often coincides with protecting the land surrounding bases to prevent encroachment and incompatible development. That common interest between the military and TNC has a long history; they’ve worked together to protect land and endangered species habitat since the late 1970s.
A Blueprint for Coastal Resilience
Payne, Barnes and their TNC partners are hopeful that Tyndall will not be the last military base to implement large-scale nature-based solutions; what happens at Tyndall will shape how Congress approaches other bases in the future.
“We are building the blueprint on how other military installations can execute coastal resilience using funding authorities that weren’t previously available to protect the investments into those bases,” Payne said.
The blueprint begins with research; TNC's Gulf Program is collaborating with experts in wave-sediment interactions and geospatial monitoring at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and experts in ecology at the University of Florida Center for Coastal Solutions to deliver an integrated scientific monitoring program for the four keystone nature-based solutions. Scientific monitoring will be tailored to each project type and assess benefits on adjacent coastal and estuarine habitat and the character of the shoreline. The scientific monitoring is designed to enhance transferability and ensure data comparability among nature-based solutions implemented at Tyndall as well as across the Northwest Florida sentinel landscape.
A Win-Win for Military and Conservation
Once in place, the living shoreline, oyster reef breakwater, submerged shoreline and seagrass enhancements will continue to grow and protect both the environment and the military interests at Tyndall. “These nature-based solutions are designed to be self-sustaining, with the ability to expand and contract along with the natural fluctuations of the St. Andrew Bay environment,” Konchar says.
“These projects provide a multi-faceted impact to both the installation and the surrounding ecosystems,” says Payne. “While our primary focus at the start was to protect the reinvestment into Tyndall AFB after Hurricane Michael’s devastation, we quickly learned that by using nature-based solutions, we could not only meet that objective but could do so at a lower lifecycle maintenance cost with projects that improve water quality and enhance natural habitats. In choosing nature-based solutions instead of traditional methods, we further provide better recreational opportunities for the surrounding community and stronger and better conditions for the local wildlife. It’s a win for everyone.”
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