Laura Cantral is the Executive Director of the Coastal Conservation League, and has previously served as the Director of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative at the Meridian Institute, the Associate Director of the US Commission on Ocean Policy, and as the Senior Policy Analyst for the Governor of Florida's Ocean Policy Committee.

Part of Laura's mission with the Coastal Conservation League is to build partnerships to advance environmental policy at the international, national, regional, and local levels, while approaching the diverse range of challenges facing the Southeast from a multi-disciplinary and collaborative perspective.

In this week's interview, Grey and Laura discuss an exciting proposed protection of up to 1 million acres of salt marsh from North Carolina to North Florida led by SERPASS and the importance of community "stakeholders" in protecting, preserving, and restoring vital coastal natural systems. The core theme of their conversation is balance, no matter whether that balance is in humanity's relations with the natural world or in strategies to manage the needs of human communities while addressing the health of neighboring ecosystems.

They also discuss the exciting work being done in the Southeast like the protection of seabird and migratory bird habitat on Deveaux Bank and Crab Bank, a commitment to citizen science through Charleston Waterkeeper, and the difference between "green infrastructure" and "gray infrastructure" through the lens of Charleston's Dutch Dialogues and the ongoing debate over how Charleston and other cities will mitigate sea level rise.

This episode of the Enduring Curiosity Podcast is sponsored by Enduring Curiosity, in association with the CityCraft Foundation.

Show Notes:

Guest - Laura Cantral

Host - Grey Gowder

Music (via Epidemic Sound) - "Deep in the Blue" (Instrumental Version)  by Ingrid Witt

Photo courtesy of Brian Sumner on Unsplash

Produced by Lugus Films Media