Sometimes Mother Nature surprises us. When Hurricane Sandy barreled through the New York metropolitan area in 2012, it earned the nickname “Superstorm Sandy.” But along Long Island’s North Shore, the storm unexpectedly helped save a local ecosystem. When it destroyed a dam that had been choking a vital salt marsh in Sunken Meadow State Park, Sandy opened the door to fully restoring the marsh—and protecting the wildlife that depends on it.
Sunken Meadow’s salt marsh will soon be a safer home for the vulnerable saltmarsh sparrow, thanks to a recently awarded $1.5 million grant from the Long Island Sound Futures Fund to the National Audubon Society. Saltmarsh sparrows are an Audubon Priority Bird, considered especially at risk due to steep population decline.
The funding allows Audubon to start construction for “Phase 1” of a long-planned restoration project to keep Sunken Meadow healthy. In Phase 1, soil will be returned to the marsh, raising 14 acres of land to protect the sparrows’ habitat from sea-level rise. This is the third Futures Funds grant supporting the project; two earlier grants funded a redesign of the park’s marsh system.
Projects like Sunken Meadow support the broader goals of the Long Island Sound Partnership: clean water, thriving habitats, and resilient communities. Salt marshes are natural buffers against flooding, reduce erosion, absorb pollutants, and provide a front-row seat to nature for visitors. Without them, coastal communities face greater environmental risks.
Sunken Meadow Creek in Kings Park, New York, was once a large salt marsh creek that flowed freely into the mouth of the Nissequogue River—the North Shore’s largest—and then into the Sound. For decades, the area was mostly untouched aside from fishing shacks. After World War II, Long Island’s urban growth reshaped the park.
Roads, parking lots, and other facilities were built for a family day out. To connect and stabilize the park, developers rerouted and dammed the creek with an earthen berm bridge. Water only passed through two small tunnels, called culverts, under the dam. These changes blocked natural water flow through the park, reducing the healthy salt marsh to mudflats that cannot support water quality the way healthy marshes can. Invasive plants, like common reed, overcrowded native plants.
“Back then, they didn’t understand the value of salt marshes or how they affect water quality and wildlife. None of that,” said Vicky O’Neill, Director of Coastal Resilience for Audubon’s Connecticut and New York regional program. “It was more, ‘let’s get this recreation area developed’.”
By Hurricane Sandy’s arrival, the marsh no longer functioned as it should. When the storm destroyed the dam, tides began to flow freely again. The remaining soil and root system, however, is too weak to hold the marsh together, and rising sea levels have made the area too low to sustain an ecosystem. The restoration aims to reverse this damage, eventually restoring about 70-80 total acres of tidal habitat.
Fixing Sunken Meadow will not be easy. Earlier projects funded through Future Funds helped researchers study how wildlife, like fish, crabs, and birds, use the area. The results informed where restoration is most important.
In Phase 1 of construction, soil and mud–collectively called sediment–will be moved from the creek and added back to the marsh surface. Certain areas will be raised higher than others, depending on the needs of the wildlife living there. Higher sections are especially important for the saltmarsh sparrow.
Salt marshes flood regularly with ocean tides, and the saltmarsh sparrow has adapted their hatching season to this rhythm. They time their nesting between new moon phases, laying eggs when tides are lowest, so their nests don’t flood and drown chicks. But these sparrows nest in high areas of the marsh, which are disappearing because of earlier development and rising oceans. Without elevated marshland, the saltmarsh sparrow could disappear from the area entirely.
But Audubon is optimistic, especially since similar efforts have worked elsewhere. At Great Meadows Marsh in Stratford, CT, areas of raised soil mounds, called hummocks, were built in 2022 to support nesting saltmarsh sparrows. As the birds nested in the hummocks, the species started to rebound. Because saltmarsh sparrows are not territorial, more high marsh means more space for other birds, too.
As O’Neill puts it: “To know you can help the whole species by restoring just one marsh is a pretty remarkable thing.”
Construction is expected to begin in late 2026 after permits are approved. But raising the marsh is only one piece of the puzzle. Invasive species, like common reeds, will need to be managed. Old infrastructure, like leftover park construction, will eventually be removed. Both of those phases are years away, but the intervening time allows wildlife to adjust. For instance, birds like the red winged blackbird can move their nests to other vegetation during construction.
While the saltmarsh sparrow’s recovery will be one of the clearest measures of success, O’Neill notes that seeing the marsh slowing returning to its natural state will be a major achievement of itself.
The timing is helpful for community connection, too. The park will remain fully open, with visitors able to watch the ongoing construction from nearby trails. Visitors looking to volunteer on the project can contact the park’s office to help grow native plant seeds that will later be planted in the marsh.
Restoring Sunken Meadow has been a vision long before Superstorm Sandy. New York State Parks, New York Sea Grant, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Save the Sound, Audubon, New York Natural Heritage Program, and Long Island Sound Partnership have all contributed to the marsh’s future.
O’Neill credits the project’s progress to the can-do attitudes and dedication of these organizations. “These big projects involve a lot of people and time,” she said. “But they’re spectacular when they work out.”
Editor’s note: this story has been corrected to confirm that the breach in the first photo has already been stabalized by Audubon.
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