New funding could help Indigenous communities disproportionately impacted by climate change

In the face of increasing land loss and flooding due to coastal erosion and climate change, the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe made the decision to relocate their community to higher ground. After winning a grant from the National Disaster Resilience Competition, the tribe worked closely with the Louisiana state government to figure out where and how the new community would be built.

Low cost sonar helps teams of crabbers in the Great Bay Estuary locate abandoned traps, which they use hook lines to remove to protect wildlife and damage to fishing boats. Funded by three grants, teams have retrieved around 2,200 traps and crabbers are compensated for their efforts. The initiative is modeled after one in the Chesapeake Bay, where 34,408 ghost pots were removed over six years. Similar efforts have been implemented around the world, including the Ghost Trap Rodeo in Tampa Bay, which is styled like a fishing tournament but competitors collect abandoned traps instead of catching fish.

New Orleans, Louisiana is infamously known as a place of cultural celebration and community, but it's also a city plagued by consistent flooding. To reduce the impacts of heavy rainfall, one city-backed initiative is incentivizing people to replace their anti-absorbent concrete with plants and flowers that are designed to take in large amounts of water.

Lake associations in New Hampshire are using a combination of chemical herbicide treatments, manual diver removal, and volunteer Lake Host inspection programs to manage invasive variable milfoil. Since 2002, their work has achieved up to 100% reduction in treated areas, and more than 1,500 invasive species intercepted at boat launches statewide.

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation worked to restore extinct Chinook salmon populations by building their own fish hatchery, establishing legislation, and creating a consensus-based advisory committee that brings government, agriculture, business, and conservation groups together to coordinate water management. Salmon returns have dramatically increased from about 60 fish in 2023 to over 900 in 2025.

Farmers in Uttar Pradesh, India, are using an age-old farming practice known as flood recession farming, which involves planting crops in floodplains when water recedes, to grow crops with less water during droughts.

The Upper Columbia United Tribes are working to reintroduce salmon along the Upper Columbia River after the Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee Dams altered the environment, preventing the salmon from returning. Their research on the impact of the dam on the river, salmon, and their culture has pressured the U.S. government to uphold its obligations to them. So far, it’s committed $200 million for the reintroduction efforts as a result.

The Nez Perce Tribe is installing solar panels on homes and community buildings across their reservation with the goal of producing enough energy to replace the hydroelectric dams on the Snake River responsible for the diminishing salmon and steelhead populations.

The Okanagan Nation Alliance leads a Fish in Schools program that donates fish spawn and the equipment to raise them to elementary and secondary schools near their territory. Thousands of fish raised by the students are released into local waterways during ceremonies at the end of the school year as a part of their efforts to bring salmon back to the area.

The Quinault Indian Nation is building new housing for its community about a mile from its current village on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. The goal is to relocate the whole village to a place further above sea level to avoid flooding and sea-level rise.