Welcome to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge
By Oyiza Adaba
 Gateway National Recreation Area was established in 1972 to offer a national park service experience to an urban audience. Gateway is a large, diverse urban park with 27,000 acres spanning Sandy Hook in N.J. and Jamaica Bay and Staten Island in N.Y. It is the 4th most visited National Park Service unit with more than 9.2 million annual visitors.
Staff from Gateway National Recreation Area and Jamaica Bay Rockaway Parks Conservancy hosted foreign journalists for a press tour of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. The Foreign Press Center New York organized this tour for members of the foreign press to cover the most recent park activities and initiatives to create a living shoreline, mitigate the impacts of extreme weather, and ensure overall climate resilience not only for this site but also for the surrounding communities. With the devastation and loss from recent hurricanes and floods, public-private partnerships like this are one of the ways coastal communities are working to mitigate environmental degradation and other losses.
LESSON FOR COP29
Climate conferences like the recently concluded COP29 can learn a lesson or two from Jamaica Wildlife Refuge - a prime example of one putting its climate dollar where its mouth is.
"In the distance, you can see the New York City skyline."
Tucked away in the Queen's Rockaway area is a wildlife refuge that houses a one mile gravel trail visited by 9.2 million visitors yearly, a wide species of rare birds and a preservation story that even Hurricane Sandy couldn't wash away.
It is no longer news that the earth's land mass is shifting and disappearing due to natural weather occurrences like hurricanes, erosion, drought, tsunamis, etc.
When Hurricane Sandy hit the New York area in 2017, much of the land where the Refuge sits, was wiped away, causing the devastating loss. For its minders, the Gateway National Recreation Area, it was an opportunity to find new ways to reclaim the conservatory.
Gateway, the fourth most visited national park unit, was established in 1972 to offer park services to urban audiences through its large diverse urban parks, with 27,000 acres spanning Sandy Hook in New Jersey and Jamaica Bay on Staten Island in New York.
On this day, Daphne Yun, Terri Carter and Elizabeth took members of the for press on the mile long tour that showed some of the experiments, trials, failures and ultimate success stories that went into rebuilding the shoreline after the storm.
With mitigating future impact in min, the team adopted both scientific and experimental tricks to
Worthy of emulation by coastal communities around the world is how the goal became attainable through public private partnership - a structure that kept all stakeholder accountable and paid attention to the littlest detail.
The Jamaica Wildlife Refuge is open to the public for trail walks, birdwatching. There is a shop/museum on the premises.