Mighty Mangroves - 235

While I have known, for a long time, mangrove forests grow along ocean coastlines in brackish waters, I’ve largely remained ignorant of their importance. I should not have allowed myself to be ignorant of these important forests as I have been drawn to them to see the wildlife which flock to them. One forest I visited was south of Naples, Florida. It is a stretch of mangrove forest along the ocean with fine hiking trails which gave my partner and I hours of wildlife viewing.

While serving with the Military Sealift Command, we would often pull into port in Singapore.  Singapore is a city, an island, and a country.  It has plenty of impressive manmade attractions and an interesting diverse history. I did not spend much of my free time investigating these points of interest after I discovered the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve.

The reserve is west and north of the the US Navy base, Sembawang, on the east side of the island where we docked.  When there with a little time to kill I would pedal my old beater bike  to the northwest and which eventually lead me to Sungei Buloh.

The Sungei Buloh is a large mangrove forest with lots of trails interconnecting blinds and elevated viewing stations. It is full of birds. 140 species either live in the wetland or stop there when migrating. It also has fish, bats, climbing crabs, bats, and giant spiders. There are rather fearsome looking monitor lizards who share the trails with you.

Warning signs alert you to the fact estuarian crocodiles should not be approached. Since there were families with kids, I thought these crocs would be pretty small if encountered. Recently I searched for crocs in the Buloh wetland. A visitor posted a picture of a massive croc out for a crawl on the same trails I had hiked.

There is a creature there, too, which was probably created on Halloween. It is called the mudskipper. They look like little torpedoes with two elevated eyes on top of it’s head and two strong fins underneath. These fins are used to drag themselves through the mud. Hence the term mudskipper.

The Singaporeans seem undaunted by the multitude of strange creatures.  There’s a popular watering hole for humans close called the “ Poison Ivy Bistro”.  

The fact the mangrove forest is home to an incredible number of critters was never lost on me but what I did not know is the trees, which look like they have many legs with knobby knees, are land protectors. Their strong roots break up storm surge protecting land, people, and cities behind them. Their roots are shaped just right to slow the outgoing tide enough, so the silted water drops its soil creating a rich mud perfect for the mudskippers to play.

Additionally, I did not know the role mangroves play in the struggle to get carbon out of the air. Trees are great at sucking the carbon out of the air and sequestering it, but mangroves are the champions storing up to 4, maybe as much as 5 times the carbon as other trees.

The troubling side of this issue is man has been relently mowing mangrove forests down for wood and property “improvements”. 

The ignorance of this is obvious. Fish have fewer places to breed and grow, birds have no place to stopover on migrations, the shoreline soil is no longer secure, and animals and people lose their protective barrier from storms.

But, since scientists have discovered mangroves are carbon sequestering super trees, nations with forward looking citizens are not only working to protect what is left but replant what has been lost.

Panama, a country already carbon negative, is working to protect their mangrove coasts. Determined conservation organizations are busy in the Caribbean, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Florida. Hopefully efforts in Brazil will hasten protection of the second largest stretch of mangrove forest.

One inspiring story of mangrove resurgence comes from Kenya where a group of women, the Mtangawanda Women’s Association, has gathered mangrove seeds to sprout seedings which are looked after in their nursery.  When the seedlings reach the optimum size, the women carry them out to the coastal mud flats where they wade out to plant them. The women’s groups in Kenya have replanted more than 50,000 trees by hand.

These non-traditional roles of Kenyan woman are getting the respect of Kenyan fisherman as they know the value of mangroves to their livelihood.

Nearly always, making “green” decisions pays off in a multitude of ways.  Trees protect the land, fish, oysters, birds, and the human communities behind them. By protecting the marine biosphere they protect marine businesses.  In the Kenyan example, women are ascending to a starring role in the world’s most crucial drama, saving the climate while making their local communities and businesses more resilient. The work they have done has righty raised their status in their community.

Note: The Nature Conservancy, TNC, works world-wide to unite science and human relations to build stronger more resilient communities. TNC has a strong presence in MI, WI, and MN.

REF: Nature Conservancy Magazine Fall 2022, “The Mangrove Mothers”