Resurrecting Poplar Island is produced in cooperation with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science: leading the way toward better management of Maryland's natural resources and the protection of the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay.

And by the following... ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: The islands of Chesapeake Bay have a problem.

They're vanishing.

The land is sinking, shorelines are eroding, and the tides?

They're only getting higher.

LORIE STAVER: We know that sea level is rising.

We also know that sea level rise is accelerating.

There used to be 200 plus islands in Chesapeake Bay.

NARRATOR: This is the story of one of those islands nearly lost.

KRISTINA MOTLEY: By the 1920s, all the full-time residents on the island had to move off the island due to erosion.

They estimated that by the year 2000, the entirety of Poplar Island will be washed away.

NARRATOR: But it was saved by a solution of staggering ambition.

KRISTINA: This island would not exist without the need to beneficially use the material coming from the approach channels going to the Port of Baltimore.

CHUCK FREY: In the beginning, you see it on paper and you really don't know how well is this going to go.

It ended up being better and something more than I could even imagine.

NARRATOR: Nearly, three decades and more than a billion dollars later, Poplar Island is a stunning sanctuary, one of the most studied places on the planet.

JUSTIN CALLAHAN: I would say that hands down, it is one of the most ambitious environmental projects certainly that I've ever seen.

NARRATOR: Daring not just to reclaim the land, but to recreate an entire ecosystem.

It is a resurrection.

♪ ♪ MARLEE ROGERS: We're from Vienna Elementary and we're getting ready to release our terrapins on Poplar Island.

KRISTINA: Well, good morning, everybody.

GROUP OF STUDENTS: Good morning.

KRISTINA: Good morning.

Welcome here to our land base, everyone.

My name is Kristina.

I'll be doing the tour with you guys today.

MARLEE: Our terrapin is named Chip.

We've been feeding him little fish and we've been measuring him and he has grown to the size of a cheeseburger.

NARRATOR: Chip, the Diamondback Terrapin, is going home.

Accompanying him on this bittersweet journey is an excited group of third-graders ready to explore the island habitat where he hatched.

All school year, they've learned that this place, Poplar Island, is exceptional.

Now, they're about to find out why.

KRISTINA: So, welcome to the island.

This is the great island and we are glad to share it with you guys today.

My name is Kristina Motley.

I am a senior environmental specialist here on Poplar Island.

I do everything outreach.

So, during our tour season, which lasts from April to the end of October, I'm pretty much on tours all day, every day.

So beneficial use is using dredge material that we have to dredge out of shipping channels and using it in a way to restore habitat.

The most effective way to restore habitat is to find an island and rebuild an island.

You guys know why we're rebuilding the island?

STUDENT: Erosion.

KISTINA: Erosion!

NARRATOR: In the 1990s, Poplar Island was just a few wispy bars of sand, waiting to be swallowed by Chesapeake Bay.

But in a dramatic reversal of fortune, it was chosen as the site of a massive ecosystem restoration, a plan born from the need to keep commerce moving.

Each year, sediment must be dredged from the Chesapeake Bay bottom, so cargo ships bound for the Port of Baltimore can navigate the shallow waters without running aground.

All that silty material has to go somewhere, but legally it can't just go anywhere.

The 1,700 acre Poplar Island has the capacity to hold 68 million cubic yards of dredge material, about 40 years' worth.

But this project is about more than containing dredge material.

It's about transforming it into something valuable.

KRISTINA: This is very important habitat that is very much on a decline.

The reason why these remote islands are so important is because they're separated from the mainland, which means they're separated from a lot of the mainland predators and a lot of the mainland hazards.

NARRATOR: An ideal place for hatching chicks like this young Least tern, only about a day old.

(chick chirps) (bird calls) JEFFREY SULLIVAN: When we get up here, there was one laying that was acting like it was incubating, so it might have a new nest.

We'll see.

NARRATOR: Biologists with the U.S. Geological Survey are monitoring how Least and Common terns are using this habitat as the island continues to develop.

JEFFREY: I don't like that egg closest to me.

It's lost its luster.

I'm not willing to call it bad yet, but just one of those where my gut tells me.

We're moving through every colony and we're marking all of the nests with those individual identifying numbers so that we can see which nests throughout time are succeeding, which are failing, and then banding all of the chicks to understand fledge success.

How are we actually contributing to the broader population?

So that tells us a lot about on Poplar what's driving success in individual locations, what habitat's being selected.

NARRATOR: And when necessary, they work with U.S.

Fish and Wildlife staff to discourage nesting.

JEFFREY: They really like that under-construction habitat, so as sand piles are coming up and being moved from place to place, they're really big on trying nest in those areas, which, of course, is a little difficult for ongoing construction.

NARRATOR: It's not just terns that like to nest near heavy equipment.

Shortly after construction began in 1998, Willem Roosenburg of Ohio University was called in to investigate reports of terrapin nesting.

WILLEM ROOSENBURG: I first came out to Poplar Island in 2002, and I got sort of a panicked call from the Army Corps of Engineers.

They were particularly concerned about where the turtles were nesting.

NARRATOR: Two decades later, Willem still spends his summers on Poplar tracking terrapins and their offspring with a group of students he calls the Turtle Crew.

WILLEM: The terrapin population has been growing rapidly in Poplar Island.

There are no raccoons and foxes, which decimate terrapin nests on the mainland.

KELSEY KRUMM: Oh, bingo.

WILLEM: Yep.

There's one little guy.

KELSEY: Seven.

WILLEM: We have very high survival rates of the nests.

That survival rate turns into lots more baby turtles.

NARRATOR: Each year, they tag about 1,000 hatchlings.

Most get released right away, but some are selected for classrooms around Maryland, tiny shelled ambassadors touting the success of Poplar's ecosystem restoration.

KATIE COLE: When they hatch, they're about the size of a quarter and so they're more susceptible to predators.

Those that we raise in our classroom are able to grow about the size of a cheeseburger is what we tell the kids and have a head start above their peers, if you will.

WILLEM: If you compare the babies that we release versus the head starts, the head starts have a three-fold higher survival rate.

KELSEY: This one's got 13 right marginals... NARRATOR: The turtle crew marks each hatchling with an identifying notch signifying its birth year.

A chip that inspired this Chip's name and a mark that will allow the turtle crew to identify him, if they happen to come across him again, a scenario these kids are hoping for.

KATIE: Some kids get very, very attached to the terrapin.

They say their little goodbyes and then they have almost like a mother hen experience of letting their child go free from the nest.

GROUP OF STUDENTS: Bye, Chip.

KATIE: Are we ready?

GROUP OF STUDENTS: Yes.

KATIE: Okay.

Are you sure?

GROUP OF STUDENTS: No.

KATIE: All right.

Here we go.

GROUP OF STUDENTS: Watching them crawl down in the water.

NARRATOR: Funding for the massive Paul S. Sarbanes Ecosystem Restoration Project, as it's formally called, comes from the Army Corps of Engineers and the Maryland Port Administration.

By the time it's complete, likely sometime in the 2040s, another restoration will be underway on Dorchester County's rapidly eroding James and Barren Islands.

Plans for this mid-Bay project rely on lessons learned on Poplar.

CHUCK: James Island is very similar to Poplar Island in how we're going to construct it.

I think it would've been much more difficult had we not overcome some engineering, you know, challenges way back in the beginning of Poplar Island.

NARRATOR: The footprint of the reconstructed Poplar Island was designed to mimic that of the original, so as not to disturb his historic oyster bars and other precious bay bottom life.

The perimeter is made up of large containment dikes built with imported stone and sand dredged from the island's interior.

Geotextile fabric keeps the sand in place and layers of stone finish the job.

Individually placed boulders fortify the more exposed western side from wind and waves.

A network of cells separated by dikes make up the island's interior.

Each can hold varying amounts of dredge material.

CHUCK: Remember the big trucks out there?

NARRATOR: It was a massive undertaking from the very beginning.

Justin Callahan and Chuck Frey were there for those early days.

JUSTIN CALLAHAN: The excavator...

I got a call from my boss that said that the Corps of Engineers was going to build an island somewhere in the Chesapeake Bay and they needed a pretty large region surveyed.

So, of course, I'm scratching my head, thinking, "You're going to do what?

You're going to build an island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay?"

NARRATOR: Justin was to compare present-day Poplar to the original survey taken in 1847.

Back then, it was found to be more than 1,100 acres.

What Justin observed in 1993 was not that.

JUSTIN: Maybe four to five acres at the time and I'm talking little chunks of land and we're talking about putting roughly, a 1,200 acre island were non-existent right now, so pretty hard to conceive.

NARRATOR: Perhaps because it hadn't really been done before.

Hart-Miller Island near Baltimore had been built to hold dredge material and create habitat, but the ambitious wetlands restoration that today defines Poplar's success was at that time the project's biggest hurdle.

CHUCK: We knew exactly the materials we were going to build, containment with sand and armor stone, and those were not very challenging.

We had studied those and knew exactly what we were doing.

The uncertainty with you know, building wetlands out of dredged material that are varying thicknesses was going to be the engineering challenge that we had.

It's basically, the consistency of like mayonnaise or maybe when it improves, it's more like peanut butter.

NARRATOR: As Poplar Island's current project manager, Katie Perkins knows all about building with peanut butter.

KATIE PERKINS: When the dredge material is placed on the island, it's about 90 percent water and 10 percent solids.

We always tell people it looks like it's safe to walk on because the top looks so dry.

It's really just a crust sitting on top of several feet of very wet material.

NARRATOR: It takes time and active management to dry it out.

KATIE P.: Right now, they're digging a perimeter trench.

The perimeter trench really helps provide a spot for the water to discharge out of the dredge material and come out to the sides and then the water can be pumped out and removed.

Every wetland cell we complete and design, we then monitor it for several years to see how it's doing.

NARRATOR: And if you build it, they will come.

Mammals like muskrats and white-tailed deer and several species of reptiles besides terrapins populate the island.

Migrating monarch butterflies use it as a critical stop to rest and refuel.

And then, there's the birds.

More than 260 avian species have been recorded here since restoration began, many of them by Tim Carney.

TIM CARNEY: I work for Maryland Environmental Service and the short version is I'm the bird guy.

Most of my job is monitoring the birds at four of our dredge sites.

So twice a month, I go to each site and I just start where I start and count every bird that I can find until I finish.

And we're finding that a lot of really unique birds to Maryland are using our sites and not necessarily other sites in the vicinity.

I think our wetlands are extremely healthy and that's another reason why they're attracting all these unusual birds.

Mallard coming in.

Another Great egret flying over.

NARRATOR: For avian enthusiasts, like the members of this local bird club, you could say Poplar's a bit of a bucket list destination.

The public is welcome to visit the island, but only on sanctioned tours.

TIM: Kind of duck-like, but it's actually a rail.

KRISTINA: A lot of people, when they come to the island, they are surprised with how big and vast it is.

We get a lot of interest about the history of the island.

NARRATOR: Poplar's past is packed with compelling stories.

It was the site of an illegal, Prohibition-era distillery and a staging area for British warships during the War of 1812.

And then, there's the tale of the ill-fated black cat farm established in 1847 by Charles Carroll, not the founding father, his grandson.

KRISTINA: This Charles Carroll saw himself as an entrepreneur and he got a hot tip that black cat fur was going to sell really, really well in China.

So, he had one of his associates put an ad out in the local paper asking the locals for 1,000 black cats.

So, he got his initial stock of cats from the mainland.

He brought them over here to Poplar.

It's an island, so the cats really couldn't go anywhere.

NARRATOR: Unfortunately for Carroll, the Bay froze that winter.

KRISTINA: The story goes, they walked straight across the ice back to the mainland and that was the end of Charles Carroll and his black cat farm.

(cat meows) NARRATOR: The island's recorded history begins with English explorer, Captain John Smith, and his famous 1612 map of Chesapeake Bay.

KRISTINA: On the map, there is a group of islands called the Winston Island that he placed on there and we believe that they might've been Poplar Island.

NARRATOR: But it was English surveyor William Claiborne, who named the island, coining it Popely's Island after a friend.

Over time, Popely's evolved to Poplar.

By the early 20th century, erosion had split the island into three pieces, creating Coaches Island to the south and Cobbler's Neck to the east.

At that time, 15 families, mostly farmers and watermen, called these islands home.

My name is Lee Howeth and my connection to Poplar Island is that my great-grandfather and his father owned land on the island and lived there their whole lives.

From what I know, life was pretty hard out on the island, especially the winters were very difficult.

So, we've got a Bible that was my great-grandmother's.

She slept with a pistol under her pillow, yeah, at night.

She was just her and the two boys and I guess she felt she needed that for protection.

NARRATOR: But the greatest threat came from the rising tides.

By the 1920s, Lee's ancestors, including his great-uncle Harvey, were forced to leave.

Left behind was the family cemetery and those buried there.

LEE HOWETH: So, that's in '66, which would've been about the time that he took the tombstones off the island.

So, he was not a young man when he went out there.

NARRATOR: Upon learning the cemetery was about to be lost to the Bay, Harvey set out to recover his family's remains, enlisting the help of local waterman, Willie Roe, who recalled the mission shortly before he died in 2022.

WILLIE ROE: The bank was about 10 or 12 feet high, and then we made a rope ladder and got up the bank and the cedar tree had blowed over on top of the stones.

LEE: They didn't have any tools.

They weren't planning to retrieve the tombstones at that time, but they ended up loading the tombstones, digging them out by hand and loading the tombstones onto Willie Roe's skiff and bringing them back to Tillman, and putting them in Willie Roe's yard, and that's where they stayed for 50 plus years.

NARRATOR: The story of Willie Roe standing sentry over the salvaged headstones is ingrained in Howeth family lore.

LEE: Over the years, I've heard, "We got to get these tombstones out of Willie Roe's yard.

We've got to get them into a permanent place."

I think it's just almost like a burden it has been over the years.

(background chatter) NARRATOR: A burden now lifted, after Lee set in motion events that brought about this very special family reunion.

RYLAND TAYLOR: Lee contacted me by email kind of out of the blue and told me that his family had some headstones that actually were formerly on Poplar Island and how would we feel about returning them to Poplar Island.

I felt very excited because so much of Poplar Island is about restoring nature, but there is also a lot of human history out here and bringing this piece of human history back is nice because it's really the only tangible piece that we have to show people.

NARRATOR: It took three years, but now the stones are back and Lee's family, including his dad Louis, is visiting this sacred place for the first time.

LEE: Here's your grandfather.

LOUIS HOWETH: I think my Uncle Harvey and my father would've appreciated them being back here very, very much.

KATHY BAKER: They couldn't have done a better job.

MATTHEW BAKER: From what we're told, this is very close to where they originally would've been.

KATHY BAKER: These were hardworking, humble people.

They probably would have a fit about all this hubbub being made over it, but they did occupy this island.

They lived here.

I just feel like it's where they need to be.

NARRATOR: In 1930, as Lee's family was leaving, some very wealthy and influential Democrats were moving in.

They purchased Poplar Island and the smaller, sheltered Cobbler's Neck, which was renamed Jefferson Island.

There, they built an exclusive club.

Distinguished members included President Franklin Roosevelt and his successor, Harry Truman.

PETER BAILEY: A place to conduct some of their business, but also have relaxation, enjoy the Chesapeake Bay and the seafood.

They had softball games with the congressmen and different people here.

One of the most famous things was just after VJ Day, they threw a big party, which included an endless list of military generals, Supreme Court justice.

NARRATOR: Also, in attendance that day in 1945 was Mary Jane Fairbank, daughter of the club's manager.

MARY JANE FAIRBANK: This is my autograph book from high school, so I have my high school autographs and the presidential party autographs all mixed together.

It says, "Best wishes, Harry S.

Truman."

He was so down to earth.

He wanted to eat outside because it was a nice day.

So, we took the dining room table, put it on the porch, had dinner, and that's when I spilled bowl of peas on the president's back.

And I was just looking at the floor and thought, "Swallow me."

But he laughed and he said, "Don't worry about it, honey.

You'll have the story to tell your grandchildren."

NARRATOR: These days, there's not much to see on Jefferson Island.

The club is long gone.

Just across the way, the progress continues on Poplar where the focus is on how to keep this latest chapter in the island's story from becoming just another tale from the past.

My name's Lorie Staver.

I'm a wetland ecologist, and I work out here at Poplar Island.

NARRATOR: As a research professor with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

Lori has been studying Poplar's wetlands since the first cell was completed in 2003.

LORIE: So, oh, and here's a little snail.

The reason we are so focused on sustainability in the marshes is because this is a long-term project.

It's a 40-year project, but eventually, most of the monitoring and the management will come to an end.

And so, we want to build these marshes to be as resilient to sea level rise as possible, anticipating that end date.

Marshes are able to keep up with sea level rise in two ways.

They trap sediment that's suspended in the water column, so as the flood tide moves over the marsh, the water velocity slows down and those particles in the soil settle out.

But we don't have a lot of suspended, inorganic sediment in this part of Chesapeake Bay.

Here, the more important contributor to that increase in elevation in the marsh surface is the plants themselves.

NARRATOR: At the end of the growing season, most of the plant material that dies decomposes, but about 10 percent doesn't.

Instead, it adds to the organic matter in the soil and over time, adds elevation.

LORIE: The plants are helping the marsh keep pace with sea level rise.

Okay, guys, so we're going to do sites 1217 and 1215 today.

NARRATOR: By measuring the plant material above and below ground, Lorie and her students can tell how the marsh is doing.

LORIE: A marsh that's drowning will have lower production of plant material than a marsh that's healthy.

So this is a soil core that we just extracted right here.

The lower part is the dredge material that was placed here and then the dark matter on top is partially decayed plant material from the plants that are growing here.

NARRATOR: The data helps Poplar's design team determine the starting elevation for each new wetland cell.

It's got to be just right.

LORIE: If it's too low, there will be too much inundation and essentially, the plants will drown.

If it's too high, it'll be too dry for them to thrive.

The really great thing about this project is they invest in monitoring and then we use that data, and that process to improve our approach going forward, and that's how we're able to adapt.

(boat engine noise) NARRATOR: While, Lorie's team looks at marsh elevation, Matt Kendall, a marine biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is analyzing marsh design.

MATT KENDALL: Not all of these marshes are exactly the same.

Some of them have wide channels kind of like what you see back here.

Some of them have these big pond features where it's open water.

Some of them have bird islands with moats around them.

Some of the creeks are fat.

Some of the creeks are skinny.

Question is, do Chesapeake Bay fish like all of those different features equally or is there something we can do in the future to maximize the benefit of future designs?

BETHANY WILLIAMS: Tag going in.

NARRATOR: Matt and his colleague, research ecologist, Bethany Williams, have put tiny transmitters in hundreds of fish, crabs, and even terrapins, recording their movements with underwater receivers.

MATT: All right, off you go, buddy.

Go get us some data.

How many detections do we have so far?

BETHANY: Eight million.

MATT: Eight million.

So those little transmitters have been pinging away all the fish and terrapins, and whatever else have been swimming around.

We've got 8 million data points to analyze out here to figure out what parts of the marsh they like the best.

BETHANY: Reverse.

NARRATOR: Tagging the fish also allows them to track them if they happen to leave the island, which, as it turns out, they do.

MATT: If you're anywhere in Chesapeake Bay eating a crab feast, it could be from a crab that spent its juvenile time here.

Same thing for a striped bass.

So it's all connected and there's really a variety of benefits that this place has, not just for the people right here locally in this community, but up and down the East Coast.

NARRATOR: One month after Chip the Terrapin returned to the island, Willem Roosenburg is back too, tagging turtles and searching, as he has for the past 20-odd years, for freshly laid eggs.

He's found hundreds of nests during his tenure, each one a tiny victory.

The start of another yearly cycle, a sign that this place, this resurrection, continues to succeed.

WILLEM: When I first came out to Poplar Island, I was incredibly skeptical.

I've been really amazed at what they have accomplished.

Is it identical to a pristine wetland that you find here on the Eastern Shore?

No, but it's pretty darn close.

LORIE: When I look out here today, I'm pretty amazed by what I see and I think most of the people that we bring out here are amazed at the scale and the success that we've achieved.

♪ ♪ Resurrecting Poplar Island was produced in cooperation with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science: leading the way toward better management of Maryland's natural resources and the protection of the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay.

And by the following...