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A group of residents in North Cove, Washington State, has developed a solution to the erosion of their coastline using piles of loose cobble. After dropping a load of rocks from the end of a road in 2016 to see what would happen, local farmer and drainage commissioner David Cottrell expanded the project to create a two-kilometer-long berm of rocks and stumps that shifts with the waves and collects sand, rebuilding the beach. The community's solution looks less like conventional structures such as sea walls and more like the dunes and berms that centuries of storms and tides build on their own, resembling the techniques many Indigenous communities use to cultivate shellfish.

As climate change progresses, coastal communities worldwide are searching for solutions to combat rising sea levels. Hard barriers like sea walls and riprap often cause further erosion and are expensive to build. By contrast, building beaches back could be enough to prevent some of the catastrophic land loss that many states in the US are forecasting due to climate change, according to coastal resilience experts.

North Cove's solution is influencing projects nearby and in California, Europe, and Guam, and is transforming the tools that agencies and communities can apply elsewhere. Engineers have long depended on rigid sea walls, and North Cove's berm is showing the benefits of a softer approach. The project has been successful in rebuilding the beach, and some species, including clam beds and shorebirds, have returned to the area.