The governors of nine affected states already gave homeowners a big break by forbidding insurers from declaring that Sandy made land as a hurricane.

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The storm destroyed sandy stretches of land along the Jersey shore and gave many on Staten Island their own Katrina moment, with over 100 people confirmed dead (over 1, 000 people died in Hurricane Katrina in 2005) and roughly one million people still without power in the regions of southern Manhattan, the Island and parts of New Jersey.

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"It's very dangerous, " says Sam Kabonge, a fisherman from the Bugala island in Lake Victoria, a tropical patch of land boasting sandy shores and lush forests.

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It has argued the sandy beach is part of operational land and closed it in 2008, citing safety concerns.

BBC: Newhaven's West Beach is a village green, says court

"We previously assumed that if the land is protected, then the plants and animals living there will persist, " said Sandy Andelman, head of CI's Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring network.

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