Central group replants much needed mangroveBy Anne Hilton Sunday, July 26 2009
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The Red mangrove reclaiming land from the sea....
How many readers remember signing the petition organised by Fishermen and Friends of the Sea to halt the destruction of the mangrove at Invader’s Bay in April/May 2000? Or the Sunday Newsday report of the Council of Presidents of the Environment (COPE) letter sent to the Port Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (PATT), pointing out that the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) on the project to deepen the channel had been altered from dumping the dredge spoils at sea, to reclaiming land — and thereby destroying the mangrove of Invaders Bay?
Sadly, protest and petition were both ignored by the powers-that-be — as seems to be the rule, rather than the exception these days. Despite the National Environment Policy that there be “No Net Loss of Mangrove”, the Invader’s Bay mangrove suffered the fate of Westmoorings, Point Lisas, Williams Bay — and most of the mangrove up and down the Gulf Coast, with the exception of Caroni, Southern Oropouche and a few pockets here and there left undisturbed by man.
The Port Authority, or Eco Engineering — or whoever — was only given permission to destroy the mangrove provided that another area of mangrove, just like it, was replanted nearby – please note that word, nearby. Mangroves are expendable because they can be replaced by replanting when reclamation work is completed – but will it be done?
That was, and is, the real concern of conservationists. Will more mangrove be planted west of the Maraval River, or elsewhere? So far as I know, apart from a few self-seeded mangroves struggling to recreate the mangrove of what is today Westmoorings, not one mangrove has been planted to make up for the loss at Invaders’ Bay. One sees no evidence of replanting on Udecott’s grandiose plans to date.
Some said it couldn’t be done, that you can’t plant mangrove, that you just have to wait for the mangrove to replant itself — but one has only to type “mangrove” in Google on the internet to see that it can and is done. And Romando Rampersad is doing it. Not, however, west of the Maraval River. Aided by the young people of Bank Village Social Welfare Community, he is planting mangrove south of the Temple in the Sea.
In case some readers are wondering why he is planting mangrove, let me remind them that the main function of the mangrove along our Gulf Coast is to make more land. You don’t believe that? It’s true. Where most of our rivers flow in to the Gulf there is, or used to be, a wetland mangrove swamp. The tangled roots of the mangrove slowed the flow of river water. When water flows slowly it has to drop the mud and silt and sand it’s been carrying down from the hills.
Slowly – so slowly we scarcely notice it – mud begins to appear above the swamp water; sea water can’t penetrate so far into the swamp; the fresh river water washes the salt out of the mud banks. Shrubs and other plants take root and another half acre or so of land has been “created” by the mangrove.
I remember, I think it was in 1999 or thereabouts, Professor John Agard giving a lecture on mangroves to the Field Naturalists’ Club in which he said that over the past 20 years mangroves had added another 1,000 acres (was it, could it have been hectares? Maybe not) to the land area of Trinidad. If my memory isn’t what it was, I hope Professor Agard will forgive and correct me?
Making new land is but one reason why mangroves need protection from man. Remove the mangrove and there would be no fish, no conch, no crabs, no oysters, no healthy fresh food for the local people to eat, or to sell the surplus food when fishing/oyster and crab harvest is good. Without the mangrove there would be nowhere for young fish to shelter, nowhere to spawn – for those fish that make their nursery in the mangrove. Without the mangrove there would be nowhere for shrimp to grow to edible size before they migrated to the North Coast to spawn. Moreover, mangroves protect the land from storm surges and act as a buffer to destructive winds.
With help from then-Environment Ministers Rennie Dumas and, later, Pennelope Beckles, Romando Rampersad began planting mangrove in 2003-4. He collected seeds, made nursery beds, used bamboo to create artificial reefs to stem the flow of the current and old car tyres to protect the young seedlings when they were big enough to plant on the edge of the sea. Planting mangrove can be a heartbreaking business when you see, as did Romando in 2005, the work of two years go up in smoke when vicious vandals set fire to tyres to destroy all that painstaking work.
Many people would have given up at that point, but not Romando Rampersad or Bank Village people. As you can see from the photographs, the mangroves are flourishing inside their artificial reefs. Forests of red mangrove seedlings (the ones with stilt roots to breathe, as it were, through their knees) are stemming the flow of the tides, closer to the shore are black mangroves with their distinctive roots that stick up out of the water to breathe. The white mangroves prefer to grow on land by river banks, these are the mangroves that take the salt out of the sea waters.
All three species of mangroves have seeds that sprout while still on the trees. The seeds drop on to the mud where they may set root, or may be carried by currents to another place along the seashore where the muddy sea floor/shore allows them to put down roots. As we’ve seen already, Romando Rampersad and his crew collect the seeds, set them in nursery beds then plant them out. Simple as it sounds, there is much more to Rampersad’s work that we have space for in Sunday Newsday today. With the Temple in the Sea already attracting visitors, one wonders whether it might be possible to construct a boardwalk as was done in Lowlands, Tobago, for visitors (and school parties) to learn more about mangrove from local guides… well it’s just a thought.
One final note: Romando Rampersad hopes to persuade others to restore the mangrove in their community (and with it, fisheries, oyster beds, crab habitats etc — and reclaim land). He has seedlings — any takers — Udecott and the Port Authority of TT?
