Living Shorelines, Scholarships, and Rattlesnakes with Tom Ries

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Tom Ries, Vice President with Environmental Science Associates, nationally known ecologist, and longtime member of TBAEP about Living Shorelines, Scholarships, and Rattlesnakes.   Read his full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form 

Showtimes: 

1:44  Nic and Laura discuss conservation on military bases

8:34  Interview with Tom Ries starts

10:29  Tom talks about scholarships

12:21  Tom discusses living shorelines

21:56  Tom's current projects

32:37  Field Notes segment- Rattlesnake encounter

35:05  Tom talks about TBAEP and the importance of getting involved with local NAEP chapters

Please be sure to ✔️subscribe, ⭐rate and ✍review. 

This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Tom Ries at https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-ries-532a919

Guest Bio:

Tom is a nationally known ecologist with more than 35 years of experience in restoring natural systems in the southeast.  His work has garnered numerous environmental awards and resulted in the restoration of more than 3,800 acres of wetlands.  In 2013, Tom received the prestigious National Wetlands Award in Conservation & Restoration from the Environmental Law Institute, in Washington DC. 

Tom founded Ecosphere Restoration Institute in 2007 to advance restoration activities through innovative public-private partnerships.  He currently also serves as Southeast Biological Services and Restoration Director for Environmental Science Associates (ESA), an environmental science and planning firm with offices throughout the U.S. 

Tom graduated from the University of South Florida with a B.A. in Biology and a minor in Geology.  In his early career, he mapped wetlands for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and implemented several coastal habitat restoration and stormwater retrofit projects in Tampa Bay, Sarasota Bay and Charlotte Harbor while working for the Southwest Florida Water Management District’s SWIM program.

Music Credits

Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa

Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcript is auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Laura 
Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds, Nic and Laura. On today's episode Nic and I discussed military conservation, we're joined by Tom Ries, Vice President and ecologist at ESA, to talk about living shorelines, his unique scholarship, and a really scary rattlesnake encounter. So it's really great. Listen, stay tuned. And finally, we all know that birds have hollow bones that allow them to fly. But surprisingly, this doesn't make them lighter than ours because they are so dense. Just interesting I always thought they were smaller I guess.

Nic  
 Yeah, yeah. They're smaller.

Laura 
Instead they provide a better mechanism for delivering oxygen to the muscles birds used to fly. Huh, who knew.

Nic
Yeah. Kind of cool.

Laura
Please be sure to subscribe, rate and review. Hit that music.

[Shout outs]

Nic 
Okay, before we get started today don't forget to join NAEP leadership for an Ask Us Anything Happy Hour on Wednesday October 13 2021. I don't know why I said the year at 4:30pm. Pacific Time 7:30pm Eastern and NAEP hosts us every month, and you can find more details @www.naep.org They're always a good time so please do come out and ask us anything so that's awesome and

Laura
Especially you youngsters.

Nic
Yeah for sure. Laura and I love doing the show, if you love it too and would like us to keep doing it. We need your help. We can't do it without our awesome sponsors, so please head over to www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com And check out our sponsor forum for details. Let's get to our segment.

[Nic and Laura's segment]

Nic
You know we talked to Tom yesterday. And so I thought it'd be really fun for us to talk a little bit about conservation efforts that happen at military installations because it's actually, it seems counterintuitive right like we're like I'm sorry you're doing conservation on a military installation, there's just so much space, and you know we talked about MacDill but MacDill has a really great environmental Endangered Species Program, and it's really cool that they've taken that effort on, and instead of, you know, balking at the idea of having to deal with it, they're like no, let's actually do some real conservation. But yeah those are great efforts at MacDill and there's great efforts at Eglin for sure I know that Eglin actually has the largest red cockaded woodpecker population.

Laura
What kind of what?

Nic
Red cockaded woodpecker. We always call them RCWs because it's way easier to say. And yeah, so they have this huge land, and so RCW's are, they're really cool birds because they're they're basically keystone species of they only want they can drill out holes in pine trees and the pine trees in the area. And so, if they don't do that then other birds and other animals can't use those that land is going to be preserved forever. And so because of that, the RCW's are like, sweet. Thanks, you know, and they've even worked with universities there to do studies on the birds which is really cool.

Laura 
Yeah, I think Eglin has even won awards for their environmental management programs.

Nic 
Yeah, I think you're right. So we're talking about our RCWs, we're talking about military conservation in general but Laura you've done work at MacDill right, like with air conservation program.

Laura  
Yeah, so we used to do you know I was in charge of our pollution prevention, grants, and MacDill would often apply or Tom Ries would apply for grants that work out there so yeah, and we also were part of the annual seagrass monitoring efforts, and so we were always fighting over who would get to do the transects out at MacDill because they are some of the most lush, but they're also some of the deepest so you got to get the tide just right on those. But yeah they we did projects from seagrass projects to reef balls and oyster domes out there to really cool and it's just, it's a great spot so pretty and be able to go out there in the private space. And I think you can see, you know, Tampa Bay from that point and you see all the shoreline across the bay around from there and everything it's fantastic,

Nic  
actually before you go on like, when you say that you have to plan for tides like you mean, if you go out at the wrong time, your days is ruined, like you have to do it the right way.

Laura 
Yeah, when you're doing the seagrass transects. You know you're starting from your starting line, and you have a set marker point to follow, so that you're basically doing a set of data to compare to the years previous to see if the seagrass is becoming more dense or if it's going out further than it used to or receding. And then that's all compiled for the whole bay to say, you know, as part of the health of the bay, sort of matrix that they have, but the seagrass is one of the key indicators. And so, the tide can change very quickly, so you could be, you know you started the low tide. If your transect is very long, which is going to be at MacDill. It's basically going to go so it depends on you know how fast it gets deep and because it's so nice out there that transect can out can go out pretty pretty far. And so by the time you get out there if the tide is rising, you're at the point where, you know someone is swimming to get to the bottom to do the collection of data and then there's a whole logistics of taking the boat along with you and, and then you're even getting so far out that you're like, Okay, are there sharks out here like, what are we getting into. So tide is a big part of planning your seagrass monitoring efforts. But, yeah, there's some really cool work out there but no we don't really talk to Kara too too much on here but Kara is always here, keeping track of this stuff for us but she's a military wife, and has had a lot of experience with different bases and I know that she's been, she's got something she can share with us so.

Kara Lubold 
Yeah, my husband was stationed on Camp Pendleton, which is a Base in Southern California, it's situated between San Diego and LA, and it's beautiful base and it's right along the shoreline I think there's like 17 miles of shoreline and little known fact it has, I believe it's about 19 endangered species now. And there's an Arroyo Toad, the California Least Tern, but there's the one that's most endangered is the Pacific pocket mouse. There's only like, I think there's only about 100 left, and they are only found in four places in the world and three of which are on base. And so the base makes huge efforts to move training positions, and, you know, and help these species out and help them survive, especially since so much of surrounding areas are being more populated it's driving more of these species on the base, because it's really one of the last remaining open wild parts of Southern California, yeah so yeah it's pretty cool.

Nic  
Gosh, especially there between LA and San Diego because, like you think of it, it's kind of all paved, except for Camp Pendleton, that's awesome. You guys did you travel to any other basis with any other conservation efforts

Kara
We were on that base for about 10 years so that was our primary spot. Yeah, I mean, that was, that was the base that.

Laura
That must have been nice.

Kara
Yeah, yeah. There are worse places to be.

Nic
No they really are. Trust me.

Kara
It was beautiful. On a clear day, we could see to Catalina, so that was lovely. But yeah, I remember flying back home, the one time to the east coast and behind me sat to businessmen and they were talking about what a waste Camp Pendleton was because it had so much undeveloped land, you know prime real estate and it made me so mad

Nic 
I know, I know, and we're all coming in from different different perspectives, it's Yeah,

Laura 
Well thanks Kara, yeah.

Nic 
It's really neat. I love that they there's just programs all over the country like that too and the requirements did military has to abide by and all federal agencies really have to abide by but it's nice to see too that sometimes it's above and beyond, you know sometimes it's more than just checking a box, which is really cool.

Laura 
Yeah, we need, we need more of that. Yay. Kara Lubold, everybody.

Kara   
Thank you, thank you.

Laura 
Alright, let's get to our interview.

Nic
Cool.

[Interview with Tom Ries starts]

Laura
All right, welcome back to EPR, today we have Tom Ries he's vice president and ecologist with environmental science associates ESA on the show, welcome Tom.

Tom Ries 
Thank you Laura and I want to thank you and Nic, and your staff, and the National Association of Environmental Professionals because this is a great venue to talk about technical items, so thank you.

Laura 
That's awesome. So Nic, as I was telling you, Tom is one of my favorite people, super awesome to work with such a nice guy and so, Tom, how about you tell the people listening a little bit about what you do.

Tom Ries 
Okay, I'm a marine biologist somedays, an ecologist a biologist, it depends on what we work on. But, yeah 35 years of experience doing this type work very fortunate in my career to right away get into projects where we would do restoration ecosystem habitat restoration. It morphed over the years and worked a lot in aquatics doing seagrass and then over the years it became more estuarian and now in the last few years, we're really been doing a lot of nature based shorelines, or living shorelines and so that's what I've been doing a lot of, and it's an important topic right with sea level rise.

Laura 
Yeah, absolutely. So Nic, Tom and I had been working together for over a decade probably. We worked on some really cool projects so I get to see firsthand the care and the type of projects that Tom does, including like restoring hidden. Hidden wetlands. Ulele springs in the Tampa area is a magical place with a nice restaurant and a lot of that is just from Tom digging that up literally. And we did some salt marsh restoration, and I really enjoyed that work that we did together, all in Florida.

Nic 
So yeah that's cool that is really cool. I didn't know you guys had like that kind of connection point. So I don't know what time did you grow up in Florida, was there like a love When did your love for outdoors start.

Tom Ries 
Well I started when I was a kid watching Jacques Cousteau, and I used to watch that show and I was so hooked on that, that even though my aptitude tests that I should be an engineer, I was going to override that and be a biologist, so I grew up in DC, and I got a scholarship to come down here for all crazy items for waterskiing I used to do a lot of water skiing, and I got pretty good at it, so I got a scholarship to go to water ski. It's kind of unusual so I said, I'm going to Florida. And when I got, I have to say when I got here the climate and the beauty and the area, you know from the corals to the springs the areas of Florida is very unique, and I never left.

Nic  
Wait, so where were you waterskiing in DC, where were you practicing before you came down here.

Tom Ries 
Well we actually live real close to the Potomac River. And so my parents were big avid boaters and they started a boat club. My Dad was Commodore and so they would always have these events and then they started getting into competitions so I would win all of them, mostly because I was the oldest kid in the group. But, but all those awards got me a scholarship to university down here and so that's how I started

Nic
I love that. That's really awesome

Laura 
Can you still get a waterskiing scholarship does that happen.

Tom Ries 
I think so. UT still does it, and I'm sure there's other schools I was so shocked I'm like alright this is some kind of sign of the water ski. I'm coming there wherever it is.

Nic
Yeah.

Laura 
That's awesome.

Nic 
So there you go, that is a new thing I think everyone is learning that you can get a water skiing scholarship. That's awesome

Laura 
It is. So now at this point though you are, I would consider you one of the foremost experts of living shoreline and why don't we talk about that a little bit for the listener, so what are living shorelines and why are they important.

Tom Ries 
That's a great question. Obviously, shorelines we think of living shorelines or natural shoreline being fine and they are, they're not altered, most of them are fine but over time the shorelines, or a shoreline could have erosion because all of a sudden their ship wakes or boat wakes or something has changed. And so that natural shoreline's eroding and so that's been happening for a long time as this population moves closer to the coast right and more of us. So the engineers get involved, and they have a good solution, and most of it's a hardened solution or put a seawall up, that takes care of your property line, There's no question, you're not going to erosion anymore. And that's good from that one point of view it stabilizes that line, but unfortunately it has a lot of negatives with it because it takes out the heat the most important portion of the shoreline which is the intersection between deep water and upwind, that's where all the fish, that's where all the birds. That's where everything's happening and so you lose that immediately when you put a vertical structure in. So that was done to people didn't realize that. And now we're starting to realize the negatives are outweighing the one positive having a hard line there. And so we're finding out a lot of sea walls were put up with a should have never been put up, they just continued them away from an area where they needed a seawall into the cove or they didn't need one. And so we are doing projects where we take the seawall out, because there was no need for it and we want to get the ecosystem services back that we lost by having a vertical structure.

Nic 
So what are those structures that are lost and how are you taking that out without doing any, you know, environmental damage really

Tom Ries 
right and so taking the seawall out is not our normal thing out of all the seawall or living shoreline projects that's only a small fraction, but the ones that are were put weather never should have been one in the first place we take them out because there's no energy there was never we need to have one somebody just put it in, is because they thought that's what everybody else is doing or they were trying to put more houses in the subdivision. So we take them out completely and put in a gradual sloped shoreline, and if it's truly a quiescent area you, that's all you need to do, just plant it and it's back to what it was before the seawall was ever there. So now you have ecosystems, a lot of areas. We can't take sea walls out because you're right 10 feet away from a building and infrastructure and there's just no room to peel back the bank to get that normal gradual six to one slope back. So in those cases we do sea wall enhancement projects. Those are not living shorelines they don't provide that resiliency to accommodate sea level rise, but they do provide ecological benefits because now you're putting things in front of the seawall that you can plant in. And so now you have a living structure in front of the seawall. So it's not a living shoreline, but it does provide ecosystem services for now. And so we do both, we do more of the latter sea wall enhancements right now, but we're going to do and trying to do more seawall removals we just got to get people comfortable with that thought, people are like, nervous that if you take it out. Yeah, the good news is, and I don't want to go straight into without another question but I will say that the good news is there's been a lot of research showing two properties right next to each other one put a living shoreline in one kept their seawall in and they had a direct hit by a hurricane, and the seawall was completely obliterated and the living shoreline we have photos of these sites, can't even tell anything happened and so that's worth its weight in gold to show these images because people are just leery of this they really think that seawall is protecting them and it really isn't because the biggest enemy to seawall is the water that sits right next to it.

Nic 
Yeah, and that's brilliant cuz that's at least right into my next question because you know, I live in North Carolina, right and our, our coastline is very fluid, and I would say you know we had direct storms a couple of years ago, that blow out these exact things just exactly what you're talking about. So, how is it able to actually keep the shore from being damaged during a big storm like that.

Tom Ries 
Right, I mean, all shorelines are vulnerable for our Cat five okay if you have something like that, that's nothing you can protect, protect from but our living shorelines we design for our Cat 2 hurricane. And so what happens in the process is, If you had a seawall there and you have a cat two big storm, you get water over the seawall and like I said it's the enemy of the seawall, and if it's not well drained it's going to take the seawall out on its way out all that water goes over it and now it's impacted behind it, and if the wall can handle that, it'll completely fail. And it doesn't necessarily happen one storm but multiple small storms will eventually take a wall down. And so that's, if you have a natural shoreline, or six to one slope, eight to one slope, all that water can go up in there. This is not providing resiliency from tidal surge, but when it leaves the wall is not there so it has a natural slow flight back down it just flows down it doesn't hurt anything and that's why you can't tell a storm even went through, because the vegetation. Most of the time can hold that if it's really bad well you may have to replace your vegetation but it can handle that kind of surge. The systems do work really well, and it's just getting the population to understand that they are like that.

Nic 
Yeah. And so, you know that is that does seem to be a big challenge because it seems like it's something that, when you hear you talk about it, everyone should be like okay let's all do living shoreline. So what are the actual challenges for getting that put in place is it expensive, is that the challenge, or something else.

Tom Ries 
Actually it's cheaper than replacing your seawall, or definitely cheaper than putting your first seawall in in the first place. Yeah, and so that's how we sell it. Okay, that's the things to the person that owns the land that's most important. If you do surveys on people and shorelines, their number one thing is they want to protect the shore. Number two is, how much does it cost to protect their shore, right, these ancillary benefits of ecological aesthetics improvements, maybe land value improvements, that's not something that they have their thumb on, they're really worried about cost and effectiveness, right. So what we're learning is that these living shorelines cost less to put in. You never have to replace them, even if they cost the same as the seawall in 30 years from now, 35 years from now, you're gonna be replacing it or somebody will be. And so, they cost less to have all the ecological benefits that we want as ecologists, and they improve aesthetics for an area. So in some states like Maryland and cities in Virginia like Norfolk, you can't put a seawall and you have to start with something softer, and they actually measured the water quality benefits of having 100 feet of natural shoreline versus a seawall, and that is counted as credits and there's there, These people are being incentivized to do this. So, to answer your question, the biggest impediment of all of this is teaching people to understand that, and even bigger than that is permitting. Permitting has not been set up for living shoreline. So up to four years ago, for example, if I wanted to Living Shoreline in, or somebody, I'm trying to talk somebody into doing it, that's six to nine months of permitting where in this state. Oh, you're just replacing the seawall it's automatic just go do it. So, it's a major disincentive to try and do a living shoreline. Now we worked on this very hard about six years ago a group of us, folks from North Carolina and other parts of the country trying to get the court to change their rules because every five years, they have their nationwide renewals. So, four years ago they came up with the nationwide 54 specifically written for nature based or living shorelines and we have been using them in the state here is trying to mimic them, but it's still not completely the same. The problem is the local municipalities and they're in the counties are not there, so even if I had the federal and state permit, I still have to deal with local permits and some counties here. And so again we're in that same boat. Well, I'm not going to wait six months and pay 10s of 1000s of dollars because you have to have a professional engineer, you need to have a coastal engineer and you got to pull plans that costs money, so it's still right now a major disincentive to do this and that's a problem that's something we need to work on nationally, because even if all the public entities did all their public lands with living shorelines, that's only like 20% right now 80% privately owned. We really need to have the public as part of the solution and so incentivizing it what, there's a lot of ways you can do it. First of all make it easier to permit and then actually incentivize somebody to do it, then you are going to really get some traction I think to get the private landowners to do it.

Laura 
Now that's a lot of really awesome information and I mean we were seeing that 15 years ago and trying, when I was working in EPC and the big challenge was, this is restoration and it had more red tape balled up around it, then you know someone trying to do something in their, their backyard and pave something over. Yeah. So yeah, we got to make those changes, and so hopefully we can get some more people on the show and people listening who will get on board and help out with that, Tom, you have at any time. I know many many projects going at once, both with your, your day job at ESA and your work with Ecosphere Restoration. So what do you got going on right now and what's, what's kind of the most exciting thing.

Tom Ries 
Well, I'll start with the living shorelines we have been very successful lately to get a lot of projects for public entities to put living shorelines in and right now I'm working on 12 projects 10 of them were underway two more are coming, all at the same time. Luckily, because there's funding right there is a state funding for it there's federal funding and hopefully more with this infrastructure funding coming down from the Feds. And so, they're jumping on the bandwagon, they're the ones that have to pay us by taxpayer money to repair that public seawall and we're saving them a lot of money by not doing it. We're working on it with one's municipality Treasure Island they have almost 3000 linear feet of shoreline that's all hardened, and we're going to take out over half of it and make it a living shoreline and the other half, we're going to do is, because it's facing the intercostal waterway we're gonna have to do a seawall enhancement, but it's saving them our taxpayers a lot of dollars and so, those are exciting projects to work on, on the Ecosphere side, we have a number of projects working on doing, you know, black rail was just listed this few months ago by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and so we're trying to do some restoration for that kind of habitat for black rails, and so I'm lucky to be able to work on that at MacDill Air Force Base, so there's a number of projects going on all at once all of good right now, good projects so that's why we endure doing them all at one time, I guess,

Nic 
yeah that's that's fun though it's great to have lots of different things going on at same time, and I don't know why that that reminded me of something, you know we're talking about sea walls and actually having a seawall mishap for you so I want to I kind of want to see if there's any others like this there's a, there's a park they built in San Diego where they put up a seawall. And they did that so that the shoreline can be used for kids like you know there's no, you know, the undertow is not there, it's just a pre beach to use, but what ended up happening was all of the, I think it's elephant seals are fur seals, it was one of the two. They're like, Oh great, a beach with no waves let's go hang out there right so it just became this, this, this seal sanctuary, right, so totally did the opposite of what was supposed to do. No one can use it. Do you have any other like fun stories about that kind of thing where there's maybe like if somebody thought the seawall would be a great idea but ended up not being one.

Tom Ries 
I'm not sure about whether they thought that would be a good idea, and most of the folks that put them in these are all been put in 40 years ago, or that timeframe where there's a lot of rapid development before there were regulations where they were literally filling the bay, making these artificial uplands, so they could have all this waterfront property. And so that's really had some detrimental impacts in the long run because, first of all we lost all that seagrass acreage, but it changed the circulation pattern every wave that hits the seawall has one or two options, it goes up or down and it does both right. The one that part that goes down, it re suspends the sediments on the bottom, and can ultimately cause cause enough scour that you can weaken your base for your seawall. And so a lot of sea walls are failing because of that the water quality is less now because every wave is resuspending sediments and if you just even just put rock at the bottom of the toe, that would be an improvement. Right, so some people have been putting riprap in front of sea walls and that's a good thing to do. It extends the life of your seawall. And so what we've been doing is taking the rock and putting sediment bags in it right at the intertidal zone, and then planting stuff here we can do mangroves, but you could do marshes, and so now you have plants growing as part of your sea wall structure. And so I think people are starting to realize that because of all the negatives that's going on that they have to either replace that sea wall, or they would like to improve water quality. These are things you can do in conjunction with whatever replacement and or enhancement to a seawall, and so I didn't really answer their questions here. You know okay so if we're going to have to all replace on sea walls here because they're all about coming of age. Well you can't have one County's saying through. Yeah, well let you do that through our permitting and you can go as high as you want, for as long as you want. We need a uniform thing right. So we're working with the regional agency here and six different counties all at once, coming up with the uniform seawall height, right, what is that and what is that what horizon you're looking at 2060 because that's when the seawalls would have to replaced, or and the end of 2070 and where is sea level going to be there. And so we're working to come up with not only a uniform height, but if you're are replacing you seawall because there's no other way to do it, then you need to do the seawall enhancement component so we're trying to get these local codes, change, and try and figure out a creative way to make it an incentive, either because of the water quality improvements and if you're a city, and you have an impaired water and the state's requiring you to improve water quality, well you only can do so much because you only have so much control, But if you got a whole mess of people, 100 people to put a living seawall in or take a seawall out, you can count that water quality credits towards the same thing so maybe you lower their taxes or if there's a permit you waive the permit fee or, or make it so that if it's such a standard thing and there's no natural impacts you don't need a permit. So that would then

Laura
There's a crazy idea.

Tom Ries
that would improve water quality for there right yeah well entities at once so that's something I think that's kind of going on here that I think is interesting, and hopefully go catch on everywhere.

Nic 
Yeah, and it's funny too, because you mentioned like that basically the sins of our past right I think in a Tampa Bay MacDill Air Force Base right they picked, like, the worst spot to put a military base, it is, is it's what 90% in the floodplain, almost all of its wetland, there's 12 Major birds there's manatees in the water I mean it is, it is a prime spot, they built it in the 40s you know and they just didn't have that foresight, so it's really cool to hear how he can kind of adapt and update, you know, really, really cool stuff, really is.

Tom Ries 
And I would add on for MacDill you are 100% Right, okay, they're in the floodplain that you know to military base they've had spills over the decades, contaminated soils, etc. But I will say this that they've been doing a really good job over the last couple of decades trying to further improve their habitats. So, in doing so, they have a because it's CENTCOM right there, you know they have 1000 yard buffer around that entire Base, no boats can come in, no nothing. So if you go in there, it is like. It's so unbelievable, full of fish and so that coastline, they've been doing a really good job of restoring it. So it's like one of the few places right in the middle of Tampa Bay that's like it used to be because there's no impacts at all, no fishing, no boating, no nothing, and on the upland side or a transition side they've been doing a really good job over the years trying to improve it for their own resiliency, but also because they're trying to do the right thing so MacDill, they really done a good job of making lemonade out of that site I mean it is. It's amazing to me.

Nic 
100% agree. Yeah,

Tom Ries 
I would just say one other thing you know we talked about shoreline resiliency, you know what is resiliency, I'd like to talk about that for a moment because resiliency for the shoreline itself is living shorelines. Okay, that's pretty simple, but that's not providing any resilience to the infrastructure or our homes or whatever, that's above that natural shoreline. So if you want to do resiliency you do resiliency for your Shoreline, which is living shorelines, but now you have to start thinking about sea level rise and more tidal surges and storms. So in your uplands, you can provide resiliency free infrastructure by just merely raising the sidewalk or even just an earthen berm that comes up a couple feet. If you're going to the 2050 projections of sea level rise. So just putting a living shoreline in by itself doesn't protect your infrastructure it does protect your Shoreline from getting destroyed. So it has to be done in tandem, living shoreline for that shoreline and for the habitat values but as you transition into the upland and at some point, need to go a little higher than your shore is probably a, yeah that needs to be done uniformly. And so that we have a tidal surge of a foot or two feet, you're not getting flooded. Right. And so that again sounds simple, but in some places now you made yourself a bowl. And so yeah, you're not getting salt water but you're getting 10 inches of rain and it can't leave right all the outfall pipes are underwater. So those have to have flapper gates on them and you may even have to have pumps and generators sitting there, to pump your bowl out that you created by doing this, but these are type things you were going to have to do if we're not going to use the R word we're not retreating right right not going to retreat. And you need to come up with, it's our thinking like this now and no one has the money right now to do it like that, right. So they have to start going, Okay, we started appropriating money for the next five years and it was piece by piece. We're uniform past fashion. We're going to start doing resiliency for our shorelines and for our infrastructure, or we're going to abandon certain areas and pull back and move our infrastructure, and that's the one that gets the most resistance but in some spot that is the way to go,

Nic  
It 100 percent is, it really is and yeah cuz that's the biggest challenge we have right like people don't want to give up what they already have, it's just a universal truth, and it's one of those things that, you know, that's where we have to start from right, it's really hard to give say well you know that beachfront property you have well we're gonna make sure that you don't have that anymore. No one's gonna buy into that so you have to have more creative solutions so I love hearing about that. It's funny, we're a field show, you know, we talk about being out in the field. So, we have a little segment we call field notes. We ask our guests about their most memorable field adventures and you've done a lot of work in the wilds of Florida, and maybe you have a scary moment for us. You want to tell us about that.

Tom Ries  
Yeah I will. Because as biologists we go out where no one usually walks right we go out with crappy areas or places or just don't. No one dares go to so you kinda on alert for are things that could hurt you snakes or whatever but we're also very urban area and so we don't see a lot of snakes, and you're you know they were worried to be worried and have your snake alert for any other things that I was working on an island where you expect many snakes where it was completely covered with non-natives Really crawling through the ground trying to get to the water just, just check out the shoreline. And of course I come across a large rattlesnake. I mean, within two feet of me, and that's fine, I come across them.

Laura
Awesome. And you're on the ground.

Tom Ries
And I'm on the ground. Yeah so many times I've come across snakes and most of them don't do anything or they'll run away from you right yeah well this one decides it's going to go towards its hole, which is right between, right at my knees. It comes right at me for speed and for that moment it's like, Oh my God. The only things I've only run out running away if it's coming right for me.

Laura
Did you know the hole was right there.

Tom Ries
No, I have no idea that it's going there I think. And I'm my face is within striking zone. Yeah, but he goes immediately right down in that hole, but for that moment there was, you know, it's like, wow, I need to get out of the woods for a while.

Nic 
 You know, for that what must have only been a half second your entire life was like this is it. This is the end. Oh my god

Tom Ries 
so yeah it's just the hazards or, you know, things you have to watch out for, but that was one that since the snake did not do its normal thing of just sitting there, or better yet, leaving. It was a very memorable field day

Nic  
for sure. Oh my gosh

Laura 
Yeah, most people want to know about alligators and forget that we also have a

Nic 
big rattlesnake, that did not just rattlesnakes big ones.

Laura 
Yeah and it's pretty healthy population of them as well. So I missed being in Tampa and going to TBAEP.  So, you know as the national level goes we kind of meet for our board meetings and, you know, maybe we'll get to meet in person again for conferences but I loved getting together with TBAEP because not only were they, Great, were they, they are a great group of people but TBAEP always just put on the best events, and I miss going to those and having the opportunity to hang out with you Tom there and other people. So, how's it going, TBAEP How long have you been a member.

Tom Ries 
I was actually a charter member when they first started, And that was got to be 20 years ago and they were specifically starting for that chapter at that time because there was a push to have registration for environmental professionals, we call it an environmental professional EP, instead of a PE which is what the engineers get anyway that got a lot of resistance by the PE's at that time. And so that's why a chapter was started and so then it kind of went to kind of a quiet time they didn't have many meetings and so it was resurrected again and now it's really doing well, like, like you said why there's so much participation, a lot of events and whether it's picking up garbage or plantings or just our week, our monthly educational series that they have. So it is a great local chapter and I'm proud to be a member I've been a member of that and state chapter for many years, because of the connectivity, and the stuff we learn right we all learn little tidbits here and there and if we're not passing that on, we're doing a disservice to our profession.

Laura 
Yeah, I always just love the connections with people, I mean, being able to see people in person, the people you're getting permits from for your grants, right, wink, wink. Great place to just kind of have those off the cuff conversation so that when you do get into the meetings about, well, we have to fill out this form, we can at least have a relationship outside of that where you can talk to each other on a casual level as well. So I think it's great that they're doing so well and you're still doing that and they're doing in person events, again,

Tom Ries 
They are I went to my first one, a month before last and it felt good, felt good to be back in there I know we're not out of the woods yet nationally or worldwide on this COVID-19 issue but in a lot more people are vaccinated as much as you hear how bad Florida is politically in that realm. It is still, there's enough people vaccinated that if you're vaccinated you feel comfortable in open air settings and you know to get together with people and I really missed that because it's been been a year and a half now, right, mostly virtual meeting.

Nic 
Yeah, it's not the same.

Tom Ries 
It really has no it isn't it's effective, but it's not. Yes, I agree. 100 percent.

Laura  
Alright, so anyone listening in the Tampa area if you're not already a member of TBAEP you need to look them up.

Nic 
So yeah, Tom this has been great. It's been really fun to hear a lot about what you do, and we probably could sit here and talk, you know 5000 you know more hours about all the fun stuff that you do, but you know we're running out of time. So, before we go is there anything else you'd like to share with us.

Tom Ries 
Well the one thing I'll say is remembering back when I came out of college and there was no internships and there really wasn't any easy opportunities for me to get experience or get in any way involved trying to get a job in this field, I'll say it has gotten a lot better through organizations like this national, state and local chapters of the environmental professionals group because those are great places for students, people just come out of college, or even somebody just wants to learn about it whether they want to do this type work. I think that gives you great opportunity to network and to you know find novel ways to volunteer to put stuff on your resume so I really think that it's changed for the better since my time coming out of college and so I highly recommend that to any young professional, please get involved with your local groups, because you don't know where these conversations and these meetings will take you, you may end up getting a great job or at least a lead. And so I highly recommend that.

Laura 
Yeah, well thank you and Bruce Hasbrouck and others for starting the TBAEP chapter and seeing the foresight and needing something like that because here we are two decades later, like you said, and it's paying off and it's really needed, you know, so imagine how far setback, I mean, Tampa Bay has won awards for their community involvement, and you know the Regional Planning Council and the ability for people to rally around and collaborate around Tampa Bay for all the issues of it being challenging in certain places, Tampa is still ahead of the game as far as some of the other similar estuaries around the country, so thank you for you also for I know that even you look at a map that Tom has touched the restoration locations. It's all over Tampa Bay, so thank you for that work, Tom.

Tom Ries 
Oh thank you, again like I said in the beginning I've had a very fortunate career, very fortunate career, and it's one of the reasons, starting the nonprofit is to get back to help to projects on private land, because that's one thing all the restoration projects on public land, public dollars, make sense. And sometimes we're missing the best place to do restoration or the most critical location and so we try and do is find where that restoration is needed and I don't care who owns it, fish don't care. Let's go ahead and figure out a way to get them funding on private lands, if they're willing to put conservation easements on it, and not everybody is but the ones that do, we're getting projects where there would have never been one and so very fortunate to continue to do this work and I'd like to do this for a lot longer.

Laura
Yeah, that's awesome.

Nic 
That's awesome. Yeah,

Laura  
Well, if there are any private listeners or public landowners or anybody who wants to talk more about living shorelines, how can they get in touch with you Tom.

Tom Ries 
You can get ahold of me through my emails, probably the easiest and I'll tell you that it's tries@esassoc.com, or through Ecosphere Restoration Institute, you can find us on the web. Either one. So thanks for that opportunity.

Laura 
Awesome. Well thanks for being here with us today. Tom,

Tom Ries 
thank you.

[Outro]

Nic 
That's our show. Thank you Tom for joining us today. It was so great to hear from you a lot of really really good information about living shorelines, I think everybody learned a lot today so thank you thank you for joining us today.

Laura 
Thank you for having a good time Tom.

Nic 
Yeah.

Laura 
Can't wait to do it again.

Nic  
Yeah, absolutely. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday, don't forget to subscribe, rate and review, see everybody.

Laura
Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai