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Dune Wrangler
Damon Noe once saw TNC’s South Cape May Meadows Preserve in New Jersey inundated by storms. But since a restoration, he’s watched the new dunes hold against a rising tide.
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Hannah Yoon
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A Recipe for Reconnection
Damon Noe is trying to help New Jersey’s birds. In the process, he’s forging stronger coastlines—and relationships with nature—in the TikTok era.
Interview by Timothy A. Schuler | Photograph by Hannah Yoon | Issue 4, 2024
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Damon Noe is a critical lands manager for The Nature Conservancy in New Jersey, where he has worked since 2000. He was present for the restoration of South Cape May Meadows, an area on the Jersey coastline that was destroyed by storms in the 1990s. In this Q&A he talks about that reconstruction, the effort to help Cape May's shorebirds and the work to encourage a new generation to care for landscapes like these.
Timothy A. Schuler: I heard the reconstruction of South Cape May Meadows Preserve was a seminal project for TNC.
Damon Noe: It was a colossal, multimillion-dollar restoration. The main dune between the Atlantic Ocean and the preserve was breached, and the preserve filled with saltwater. Our wetlands inside the preserve are freshwater, and most, if not all, of their inhabitants rely on it being clean and fresh. This includes thousands of migrating birds that come through the Atlantic Flyway. It’s critical for these birds to have places they can stop, rest, eat, even breed. Having the ocean barreling into this ecosystem would drastically alter it to the point where its function as a critical stopover would cease. So the Army Corps came in and, with our help and planning, restored the entire place—I mean, leveled it and basically started over.
TS: Cape May Meadows is an example not just of habitat protection, but also of a controlled retreat from the coastline. The preserve occupies what was the town of South Cape May, which was abandoned in the 1950s after several catastrophic storms. Does it hold lessons for our present era of climate change?
DN: Instead of traditional sea walls, we created a huge natural dune system. And now it’s covered in vegetation and the roots have made it much stronger than when it was sand alone. When [Superstorm] Sandy hit in 2012, [storm surges] came about three quarters of the way up but never got over. So there is a lesson: A natural barrier that becomes vegetated becomes stronger. It kept out a massive storm, and it still works to this day.
TS: But some beach-nesting bird species are still vulnerable to flooding. Is flooding the only threat to these birds, and what steps have you taken to help them?
DN: For the shorebirds that we have—least terns, piping plovers, oyster catchers—their habitat is so truncated at this point. I didn’t see any way that these birds were going to survive without some help. So in 2019 I built [enclosures] with a 6-foot fence with a skirt on the bottom so [predators] can’t dig under it. It’s huge—we’re talking a football field, if not bigger. Then I made a couple call boxes that call the birds to areas inside the fence. The first year was an incredible success, and I went three years without losing a single bird to a predator. However, over the past three years, we had a minimum of three storms inundate the beach end to end—1 mile of water, 3 feet deep. Every bird had to either fly away or die. Now, it’s flooding multiple times a year. And if it floods during the summer, when the birds are nesting, you lose the whole colony.
TS: What are some of the ways you’re hoping to address the flooding?
DN: I decided to make an elevated habitat and see if the birds would nest on it. My first attempt was small—a pilot to see if it would withstand the elements for a season.
It did, but I learned that making a [sizable] elevated habitat was beyond our capabilities. But periodically, the Army Corps does beach nourishment along the Atlantic coast, so I approached them with the idea of making elevated islands on our beach. The idea would be to create three large bird islands from beach sand with a smattering of shell on the top and heavier shell on the forefront to take any direct hits. With decoys and call boxes, I can get the birds to nest pretty close to where I want them. If I can get them to nest on these islands, when the flooding arrives, our birds [could] be high and dry.
Protecting Shorebirds
Damon Noe uses a variety of methods to give nesting shorebirds a boost at South Cape May Meadows Preseve in New Jersey.
Popular with Shorebirds: Shorebirds like this sanderling (left) and American oystercatcher rely on beaches like those at South Cape May Meadows Preserve. © Hannah Yoon
Scare Off Predators: Noe checks a solar-powered call box that broadcasts bird calls to attract beach-nesting birds to the preserve. © Hannah Yoon
Distract Predators: Damon Noe places a fake wooden bird on the beach. The wooden decoys are used to attract the target beach-nesting birds. © Hannah Yoon
Beach Closures: Some beach areas may be closed to protect nesting endangered birds. © Hannah Yoon
TS: What originally spurred your interest in conservation?
DN: I had a bit of an Elysian childhood, growing up in Grandview, Washington, in an orchard under sun-drenched skies. [When I was 11], we moved to New Jersey, to a farm five minutes from the office I’m in right now. At the time, there was a gentleman here named Dr. C. Brooke Worth—sort of an eclectic scientist—and I would walk over with my dad, who was a science teacher. The walls and ceilings of his study were pinned with insects, just thousands of them, and as a little boy, it was like, this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.
TS: Have the goals and methods of conservation changed since you began your career?
DN: I had an important moment at our [Maurice River] Bluffs Preserve about a decade ago. This woman and her daughter—she couldn’t have been more than eight years old—were skipping down the trail and beaming. Absolutely beaming. And it took my breath away. I was, like, look at the power nature has on these people. I realized I should pay more attention to how a preserve is affecting people, not just the species. We’re creating destinations in our preserves, like installing a 20-foot-high [statue of a] monarch butterfly by a famous artist at our Garrett Family Preserve. How is that preserving nature? Well, we’re drawing people in.
TS: How are you thinking about young people and fostering their connection with the natural world?
DN: The important thing is to get them out there. Experiencing nature from TikTok is just not the same. With this instant gratification and the hijacking of our brains and dopamine systems, I think they’re affecting primitive parts of our brain. I’m convinced nature has a much older connection to our brain, and a much more powerful one. We need to expose people to this magic and let them grow naturally.
The Nature Conservancy has the recipe. But nature has the ingredients.
TS: What is a question about your job that you wish more people would ask you?
DN: “If you could snap your fingers, what would you like to see?”
TS: And your answer?
DN: An ecosystem that has a lot of biodiversity is stronger, more resilient, more adaptable. I think if an organization is more diverse, it has those same attributes. It becomes stronger, it becomes more innovative, it becomes a healthier place to be. That would be my snap of the fingers. I think all the good stuff that we want would come after that.
About the Creators
Timothy A. Schuler is a journalist who reports on the intersection of built and natural environments. He is also an editor for Landscape Architecture Magazine.
Hannah Yoon is a photographer based in Philadelphia with a focus on portraiture, documentary and photojournalism work.
Issue 4, 2024
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