With a new coastal resilience grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), the University of Puerto Rico at Aguadilla will work with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture (DPLA) to restore mangroves along the coast of Puerto Rico. The project will focus on the ecological restoration of four mangrove forests devastated by the 2017-18 storms in the western part of the island. Restoring about 146 acres of the mangroves will improve storm protection, resilience and ecosystem services for three communities.
Principal investigator, UW-Madison alumnus Robert J. Mayer, is a biology professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Aguadilla, director of Vida Marina and a former GHI Visiting Scholar. He is leading the project with DPLA Professor David Bart and an Earth Partnership team, including Director Cheryl Bauer-Armstrong and multicultural relations manager Maria Moreno.
Read more about the project here.