Jessica Reilly

Jessica Reilly-Moman is the director of the Island Institute's Center for Climate and Community, a non-profit based in Rockland, Maine. She has also assisted the Maine Climate Council. Her ICWA fellowship (Seafaring, 2015-2017) based on a sailing boat, explored adaption to climate change in coastal communities along Mexico's Pacific coast, Central America and the Caribbean. Jessica holds a doctorate in ecology and environmental sciences from the University of Maine and an MS in energy and resources from UC Berkeley.

ICWA Dispatches by Jessica Reilly

  • What Can a National Park Do?

    “Mexico has many good laws.” Professor Martín Soto leans back from behind a clump of papers on his desk and sighs. “It’s the enforcement that lacks.” I’m sitting...

  • Finding Altata: the Slow Change for the Fishers

    “Whatever you do, don’t go to Altata.” These were the last words we heard as we cast off our dock lines in Guaymas. We were about to sail...

  • Under the Surface of Sea Level Rise: the Fisherman’s Secret Plight

    ‘Its beauty has been compared with the Greek isles,’ the guidebook waxed—followed by the incongruous statement that Topolobampo is primarily a cargo port. “Sounds good to me,” Jon...

  • The Echoes of Hurricanes

    Last week, 195 nations meet in Paris to decide the fate of the systems that support life on earth. Again. Since 1995, a majority of the world’s countries...

  • The Sinister Effects of Warmer Water

    “At night, it looked like another city,” Isabel tells me as she gestures out her office window toward the sea. “There were hundreds of lights. But now, what...

Publications by Jessica Reilly

  • Wings to Nowhere — Birds, Land Use, and Climate

    Luis whips his head around so quickly that a droplet of water flies out of his nose. He’s mid-sentence, walking through the heavy sand and talking about community-based...

  • What Can a National Park Do?

    “Mexico has many good laws.” Professor Martín Soto leans back from behind a clump of papers on his desk and sighs. “It’s the enforcement that lacks.” I’m sitting...

  • Update from Puerto Chiapas

    We just crossed the dreaded Gulf of Tehuantepec: the southernmost gulf in Pacific Mexico, where winds funnel out of the Caribbean, howling down across land to gobble up...

  • Update from Zihuatanejo

    We are about to depart from Zihuatanejo. We have spent the past two days exploring and reprovisioning here. The town is unlike any we have seen yet, it...

  • Finding Altata: the Slow Change for the Fishers

    “Whatever you do, don’t go to Altata.” These were the last words we heard as we cast off our dock lines in Guaymas. We were about to sail...