Jaycee Park Wetland Rehabilitation

Birds like egrets, herons, ducks, and storks use freshwater wetlands along the coast as sources of drinking water or as places for nesting, feeding, or sheltering. However, coastal freshwater habitats are heavily threatened by saltwater intrusion and coastal development.

Jaycee Park is the largest park within the City of Tybee Island, GA. The park offers recreation fields, walking trails, a disc golf course, a playground, and community pavilion spaces for local island residents and 1.7 million+ visitors to Tybee Island annually. A freshwater creek runs through the park and serves as a stormwater retention system for the local area, which is known to experience significant flooding during heavy rainfall or storms. The creek also experiences saltwater intrusion from the adjacent marshes under Solomon and Van Horne Ave., threatening the freshwater status of this habitat.

With financial support from Amazon's Project Lorax, Georgia Conservancy and the City of Tybee partnered to design a wetland rehabilitation project along the creek of Jaycee Park. This project will install an array of freshwater and salt-tolerant vegetation along the 700 linear feet of the southern portion of the creek. By using local plant species tolerant of both freshwater and saltwater, this creek will continue to thrive as a coastal freshwater wetland for bird species, without permanently limiting salt marsh plants from migrating into the park if threatened by sea-level rise. The addition of these plantings also filters stormwater runoff from the local area of pollutants and excess nutrients, and increases the park's stormwater capacity with a lower risk of erosion.

The initial phase of this project, which included removal of the invasive vegetation, has been completed. Native vegetation planting is scheduled for Fall 2026, after the summer tourism season.