By most books, hurricane season starts on June 1. But we’ve been preparing coastal landscapes to rebound from a superstorm for more than a decade.

Bolstering the resilience of coasts so they’re able to withstand storm surge is a cornerstone of our work conserving, protecting and enhancing habitats for people and wildlife. When Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast coast in 2012, it sounded the alarm on how crucial it is to prepare our coastal communities for a changing climate and heightened storms.

With a slew of critical federal funding for Hurricane Sandy recovery, we rolled out a series of projects to not only recover from the storm but to strengthen ecosystems into the future.

Those projects set in motion lasting landscape-scale changes — so that all parts of interlocking ecosystems are considered, across state lines and habitat-types — that will benefit communities and wildlife for decades. But the impacts of such work transcend their immediate surroundings.

Drawing upon the lessons we learned from Sandy recovery work, we hit the ground running with robust coastal resilience efforts when massive funding arrived through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Together, the funding sources allow us to continue important work that will help communities and habitats rebound when the next storm hits.

Sandy work provided a critical foundation for future projects. We laid the groundwork for future partnerships and set a standard for delivering on...

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