Spanning 25,000 acres in and outside levee protection and with 80,000 visitors a year, Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest urban wildlife refuges in the United States, offers an ideal opportunity to consider these questions of responsiveness, replicability and adaptability.  The refuge contains a diverse range of habitats from bottomland hardwood forests to freshwater and brackish marshes and includes the Orleans Landbridge, a vital and natural part of urban New Orleans’ storm defense network. The project site lies in close proximity to downtown New Orleans, on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain and within view of the busy I-10 corridor, offering the chance to draw people into the landscape and expand their understanding of the ecology. Additionally, as a popular spot for birding, fishing and crabbing, particularly during Lent, the site also has a built-in community of diverse users with which the design team engaged throughout the process. On an ongoing basis, the design team worked to address the immediate programmatic needs of the partner while pursuing parallel conversations about the larger climate challenges facing our region.