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Saturday, October 30, 2021

MAP NEWS ISSUE #532 - Oct 30, 2021

Mangrove Action Project

The MAP News
532nd Edition                                                  Oct 30, 2021

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FEATURED STORY
 
What Climate Finance Means for the Global South in the Run-up to COP26 
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GLOBAL - Developed and developing countries have different perspectives on climate finance. Chandra Bhushan, a public policy expert and founder/CEO of International Forum for Environment, Sustainability & Technology (iFOREST), explained when developing countries speak of climate-finance requirements, they largely mean public grants from developed countries. But when developed countries talk about climate finance, they mean “everything from loans to grants to bilateral and multilateral funding,” Bhushan said. Climate finance usually aids two solutions: Mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation refers to efforts aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions like investments in renewable energy technologies or even making existing energy generation more efficient. Adaptation means remodeling and reorganizing society and the physical environment to address risks posed by climate change. Climate adaptation includes enhancing the resilience of coastal communities with nature-based solutions like restoration of mangroves and providing food security with climate-resilient agricultural practices. READ MORE 
 
GLOBAL

MAP seeks SEO volunteer - Part time
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USA - Mangrove Action Project is looking for a volunteer to assist with SEO issues on our Newsletter and blogspot. If you have the ability, and a little spare time to share your valuable knowledge, please contact Sam about volunteering a few hours of your time to help us make our newsletter and blogspot interesting, attractive and searchable. CONTACT SAM

AFRICA 

Gabon plumbs carbon mystery of its mighty mangrove trees
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GABON - The towering trees in Gabon's impenetrable mangrove swamps have helped to make the Central African country one of the world's few net absorbers of carbon as the plants sequester the greenhouse gas four times faster than forests on land. While the world struggles to curb climate change and U.N. talks on the issue begin at the end of the month, countries such as Gabon are trying to work out exactly how much carbon is locked in their mangroves. "We do not really have a lot of information on the mangrove forests compared to the terra firma forests," said Vincent Medjibe, who collects carbon data for Gabon's National Parks Agency. "We're working on it." Across the estuary from the mangrove-rich Pongara National Park, the growing capital Libreville exemplifies the threat mangroves face. In one outer neighbourhood, dry tussocks and muddy holes are what remain of a former swamp that has been illegally cleared for construction. As well as storing carbon, the swamps are rich in wildlife and serve as natural flood defences. A resident who gave her name only as Christella said she was worried her future neighbours didn't realise the danger. "They're in a basin of sorts and when the heavy rains come, the water can rise," she said. The positive news is that awareness is growing. READ MORE 

CEPEJ and the Reality of Niger Delta Underdevelopment Crisis 

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NIGERIA - Talking about the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, it is true that today there exists in the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) which made some far-reaching provisions for the host community’s development such as its demand that any oil prospecting licence or mining lease or an operating company on behalf of joint venture partners (the settlor) is required to contribute 3% of its actual operating expenditure in the immediately preceding calendar year to the host communities development trust fund. This is in addition to the existing contribution of 3% to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). It is also true that recently, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice President of Nigeria, at a function in Lagos noted that the present administration was determined to see through to the completion of all the critical projects in the region. Once more, we are equally witnesses to the fact that the Minister of Environment, Dr Mohammad Abubakar, after a meeting in Port Harcourt, said his ministry was in talks with key stakeholders in the Niger Delta region on devising a blueprint for alternative ways to preserve, conserve and restore mangrove in the region. READ MORE 

Blue forests are under threat. A quiet revolution could save them 

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MADAGASCAR - Drilling the mud for hours in raging heat, surrounded by swarms of wasps, their feet cut by razor shells: scientists in southwest Madagascar are counting fish and collecting data in the harshest conditions. They are hoping to save one of the most valuable environments on the planet: mangroves. Those “blue forests”, at the frontier of land and sea, host some of the richest ecosystems on earth. Essential to the livelihoods of coastal communities, they are also extremely powerful carbon traps – storing up to six times more carbon than an equivalent area of the Amazon rainforest. But they are under threat. Overexploited for timber, charcoal and unrestricted fishing, they are the fastest disappearing forests on earth, at a rate of 1-2% per year. Over the past century, mangrove areas worldwide have declined by an estimated 30 to 50%. To prevent this, Blue Ventures, a nonprofit organisation that works with coastal communities in more than a dozen countries to protect tropical fisheries, is helping local people to effectively manage their use of mangrove forests. This will be crucial to secure their survival – and success relies on a data-led scientific approach which involves, among other things, counting fish in the mud. READ MORE 

AMERICAS 

SpaceX Destroys Habitat Of Endangered Species, Defies Federal Approval Process 

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USA - While SpaceX is focusing on exploring distant planets, the company's operations are taking a toll on planet Earth, specifically in Boca Chica, Texas. Here, the SpaceX Starship Super Heavy Project and launch site are being built and expanded, even though some of the infrastructure has yet to be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). American Bird Conservancy (ABC) is deeply concerned about the facility's impacts on wildlife habitat and species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), including the federally Threatened Piping Plover and Red Knot, and the Endangered Northern Aplomado Falcon. “The ecological importance of this region cannot be overstated,” said EJ Williams, ABC's Vice President for the Southeast Region. “It's critically important to ensure impacts to its natural resources are minimized and mitigated.” In addition to Threatened and Endangered birds, the area surrounding the Boca Chica SpaceX site provides sensitive habitat for other wildlife listed under the ESA — from the Ocelot and several species of sea turtle (Kemp's Ridley, Hawksbill, Leatherback, Loggerhead, and Green) to the Gulf Coast population of the Jaguarundi. READ MORE 

Novel habitats created by non-native mangrove trees may inform the future management 

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USA - In a new paper published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, environmental science and management professor Elise Granek and lead author Casey Lewis, PSU alumna, report the findings of a census of zooplankton communities in non-native mangrove habitats and open coastline on the island of Moloka'i, Hawaii. The study found the diversity of zooplankton communities in mangrove stands was comparable to that of the open coast. Additionally, the authors report that while they found some species to be less abundant in mangrove sites, other rare species were only present in mangrove habitats. The findings suggest that the non-native mangroves may benefit, rather than impede, zooplankton, many of which are important species in the ecosystems they inhabit. The paper's implications suggest that faced with declining fisheries, threatened reef ecosystems, and changing climatic and oceanic conditions, the value of ecosystem services provided by some invasive species, e.g., mangroves, may outweigh their negative effects. Therefore, the decision-making process involved in managing some invasive species warrants more careful consideration of both costs and benefits provided to the ecosystem. "In a static world, invasive species are bad because they disrupt ecosystems," Granek said. "But we're living in a world where the environment is changing. The climate is changing. The oceans are changing. That changes the calculus of how bad some invasive species are to the habitats they've been introduced into."  READ MORE 

Tropical cyclones augur well for mangroves, but… 

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USA - Tropical storms, in the last 21 years, have had an overall positive impact on the ability of mangroves in India to fix carbon dioxide, a key climate-warming greenhouse gas, says a study. Researchers at the department of geography at the University of Georgia in the United States, looked at how mangrove productivity or carbon assimilation (indicated by Gross Primary Productivity or GPP) had changed over 21 years and if tropical cyclone frequency or intensity played a role in this trend. The driving motivation was to explore the resilience of mangroves in India by looking at how storms have impacted GPP in the past. They examined satellite-datasets of GPP for seven mangrove sites along the east and west coasts of India, from January 2000 to July 2020, finding that there is a net increase in GPP for all mangrove sites, and especially for the east coast mangroves which are more frequently hit by cyclones compared to the west coast. “It (cyclone) make conditions suitable for growth and carbon uptake if recovery time is adequate post a cyclone event. READ MORE 

US ambassador highlights importance of mangroves 
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GUAYANA - In the lead up to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) and with 2021 marking the start of the United Nations Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, US Ambassador Sarah-Ann Lynch visited the Guyana Mangrove Restoration Project, a programme under the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute. A release from the US Embassy said that she met with Jagnarine Singh, CEO of NAREI, Kene Mosely, Coordinator of the Mangrove Restoration Project, and Damien Fernandes, Executive Director of Conservation International, who described their coastal adaptation strategies using mangroves in combination with infrastructure as a nature-based climate mitigation strategy. READ MORE 

ASIA 

Scientists reveal genetic secrets of stress-tolerant mangrove trees 

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JAPAN - Mangrove trees straddle the boundary between land and ocean, in harsh environments characterized by rapidly changing levels of salinity and low oxygen. For most plants, these conditions would mark a death sentence, but mangroves have evolved a remarkable resistance to the stresses of these hostile locations. Now, researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have decoded the genome of the mangrove tree, Bruguiera gymnorhiza, and revealed how this species regulates its genes in order to cope with stress. Their findings, published recently in New Phytologist, could one day be used to help other plants be more tolerant to stress. "Mangroves are an ideal model system for studying the molecular mechanism behind stress tolerance, as they naturally cope with various stress factors," said Dr. Matin Miryeganeh, first author of the study and a researcher in the Plant Epigenetics Unit at OIST. READ MORE 

Indonesia pushes for mangrove forest conservation  
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INDONESIA - 
Indonesia has been working for the restoration of mangrove forests in a number of areas in the Southeast Asian country so as to conserve the world's largest coverage of mangrove forests. "We are replanting mangroves to protect against waves of sea waters, sea water intrusions, and also to protect the habitat of species in and around mangrove forests," President Joko Widodo said after a replanting activity on Tuesday, in which 180,000 hectares of mangrove forests will be rehabilitated. From September onwards, the Indonesian president has visited some areas in the country including Cilacap district in Central Java province, Batam city in Riau Islands province and Badung district in Bali province where he planted mangroves. "Our target is that in the next three years we will rehabilitate 600,000 hectares of mangrove forests. Indonesia has the largest mangrove forest coverage in the world, with an area of 3.36 million hectares," he noted. The planting of mangroves in the coastal areas was also expected to increase fish production, he said, adding that the income of fishermen would therefore increase. READ MORE 

Rebound in China’s coastal wetlands following conservation and restoration 

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CHINA - The coastal zone of China has experienced large increases in population, economy and urbanization since the early 1980s. Many studies have reported the loss, degradation and fragmentation of coastal wetlands in China at local to regional scales. To date, at the national scale, our knowledge of the spatial distribution, inter-annual variation and multi-decadal trends of coastal wetlands in China remains very limited. Here we analysed ~62,000 Landsat-5, -7 and -8 images over the period 1984–2018 and generated maps of coastal wetlands for individual years in China at 30-m spatial resolution. We found that coastal wetland area significantly decreased between 1984 and 2011. We also found a substantial increase in saltmarsh area and a stable trend of tidal flat area since 2012, driven by reduced anthropogenic activities and increased conservation and restoration efforts. These coastal wetland maps for the period 1984–2018 are invaluable for improvement of coastal wetland management and sustainability in China. READ MORE 

 

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URGENT ACTION
Please Send Letters to FAA Asking that the Space X Facility not be granted permission to expand its operations at Boca Chica Wildlife Refuge in Texas. Deadline is Nov. 1st, so please send your letter soon!

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13 Year old Linda Li "Mangrove Adventure" from Kid Dream Art School
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Community Based Ecological Mangrove Restoration in Rufiji Delta VIEW VIDEO

Video: Mangroves for the Future - A look bacK. As the latest phase of Mangroves for the Future (MFF) draws to a close, this video highlights some of the project’s most successful initiatives – from local women supporting national park management in Viet Nam to an island in the Maldives that has become a model for waste management, and everything in between. View Here

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Marvellous Mangroves Curriculum

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Thursday, October 28, 2021

Letter to stop SpaceX in Boca Chica Wildlife Refuge - copy and send

 Ms. Stacey Zee, RE: SpaceX PEA

c/o ICF, 9300 Lee Highway, Fairfax, VA 22031

To: E-mail: spacexbocachica@icf.com,

Stacey.Zee@faa.gov



CC: <lesli_gray@fws.gov>


Dear Ms Zee,

I am writing to provide comment on the FAA’s Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment for the SpaceX Starship Super Heavy Project at the Boca Chica Launch Site.I am very concerned about the current state of development and activities which have already had major negative impacts and which were never evaluated in the original EIS, making this new plan to EXPAND that activity and infrastructure even more alarming.  The Boca Chica area, including the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, several Texas State Parks and the South Bay Coastal Preserve – is an ecological gem, yet it is being treated by SpaceX as if it were a wasteland. This expansion plan essentially seeks to sacrifice a publicly-owned natural resource area of hemispheric importance for a private company.  I just read an informative article by the American Bird Conservancy, and the following quote is quite alarming: 

“The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) is deeply concerned about the facility's impacts on wildlife habitat and species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), including the federally Threatened Piping Plover and Red Knot, and the Endangered Northern Aplomado Falcon…The SpaceX facility in Boca Chica is surrounded by federal and state public lands used by hundreds of thousands of individual birds of many different species throughout the year…”

Boca Chica is an especially vital place for migratory birds that pass through there to rest and refuel so they can successfully continue and complete their migratory journeys. Also, the area contains all five seagrass species that occur in Texas, mostly fringed by dense and probably the most well-established stands of black mangrove in the state. These stands of mangrove also have considerable importance to nesting waterbirds, such as the Roseate Spoonbill. The Piping Plover, listed as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act, is one of the many species being negatively impacted by the ongoing construction of the SpaceX Starship Super Heavy Project and launch site. According to a recent analysis, the population of Piping Plovers has declined by over 50% at the site in only three years since the onset of testing and launch activities. This is an alarmingly rapid decline for a species that is already under increasing risk of extinction.


An objective Environmental Impact Assessment should be made:


  • To address cumulative impacts that have yet to be recognized by the Federal Aviation Administration and SpaceX, such as fuel transport and storage at the facility, as well as massive proposed infrastructure projects including a 250 MW power plant, a natural gas plant and liquefier, and a desalination plant.

  • A launch failure analysis should be part of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to assess the risks to public safety and risks to the proposed infrastructure and operations at the Port of Brownsville and off-shore.

  • The Federal Aviation Administration should examine more alternatives, rather than just the “all or nothing” alternatives.  One of the other alternatives that should be included is moving the testing of Super Heavy to a designated large rocket testing site, such as Provo, Utah or Stennis AFB in Mississippi.  The latter is where the Saturn V rocket was tested, and where the Space Launch Systems (SLS) rocket is currently being tested.  Another alternative should include launching Super Heavy offshore or from Cape Canaveral.

  • The Clean Water Act, Section 404 specifies the consideration of alternatives to the proposed action of filling or dredging of wetlands. SpaceX has provided no alternatives or other measures necessary to protect public health and safety.

  • Construction is anticipated to permanently fill 17.16 acres of wetlands, and the filling of 25.8 acres of floodplain. No alternatives or mitigation has been provided by SpaceX. 

  • The Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment mentions that noise and shock waves (far-field overpressure) may break windows on SPI and Port Isabel.  If that can happen 5 miles away from the launch site, what will be the effects on birds, reptiles & small mammals that are a half mile or less from the launch site?  The launch site is surrounded by national wildlife refuge and state park land.


With these and many other serious concerns in mind, I therefore must ask why is the SpaceX Starship Super Heavy Project and launch site being expanded, even though some of the infrastructure has yet to be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This is not a suitable site for such a volatile and damaging industry to operate. Now that this site is no longer out of sight and out of mind, I ask that the FAA NOT approve this proposed SpaceX expansion scheme. Instead, I ask that the FAA move to better regulate and greatly reduce operations there so that they abide by the original approval stipulations which SpaceX has sadly repeatedly violated without sufficient repercussions.


Awaiting Your Prompt Response,


Name:

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Saturday, October 16, 2021

MAP News Issue # 531 - Oct 16, 2021

Mangrove Action Project
The MAP News
531st Edition                                                  Oct 16, 2021
FEATURED STORY

MAP’s International Children’s Art Calendars 2022

2022-Calendar-Front-Cover
MAP’s International Children’s Art Calendars 2022 are here and ready to order! With beautiful artwork submitted by students from many countries around the world, these calendars both make a great gift, and are a helpful reminder for what we can do to assist in saving our world’s mangroves. All proceeds will go towards furthering MAP’s mission of conserving, restoring, and protecting the world’s invaluable mangrove forests. We wish to thank every child, their teachers and associate non-governmental organizations that participated and collaborated in MAP’s 20th anniversary International Children’s Mangrove Art Contest during 2021. For two decades, MAP’s art contest has been inspiring and creating awareness as well as giving the youths the opportunity to voice and express their point of view on mangrove forests and the problems mangroves face today. We are thrilled to see interest for mangroves continuing to grow among youths, inspiring creative art and learning through participation. Through the art contest, young artists discover the incredible beauty, importance, and biodiversity of mangrove forests, depicting through their art what they have experienced via mangrove field trips, or in the classroom, and home studies. ORDER HERE

GLOBAL

Identifying global and local drivers of change in mangrove cover and the implications for management
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GLOBAL - Climate change and human activities continue to drive a widespread decline in global mangrove coverage, undermining their capacity to provide ecosystem benefits. While global and local scale drivers of change on mangroves are widely acknowledged, the relative importance and the exposure of mangroves to climatic, geomorphological, and direct human threats vary spatially. Understanding the role and relative importance of the multiscale and multiple threats to mangroves and how these vary spatially is fundamental for formulating a spatially adaptive approach to their management and conservation. Using satellite-derived indicators of mangrove condition aggregated over 19 years (2002 to 2019) and 14 proxies of climate, human activity, and geomorphology, we applied machine learning methods to determine the role and relative importance of the change drivers. Using outputs from this deductive statistical process, we applied inductive methods to map mangrove exposure spatially. READ MORE

Global restoration now has an online meeting point
Restor
GLOBAL - With all of the environmental problems in the world, it can be easy to forget that there are also many solutions. Across the globe, people are working to restore nature, and good ideas abound. Organizing and visualizing this work, however, is a mammoth task, but it is one that the online platform Restor is attempting to achieve. Restor is a map-based, open-source platform that combines on-the-ground knowledge, ecosystem research, and satellite imagery so people can better plan, manage and monitor restoration projects. The locations of more than 50,000 restoration and conservation initiatives are now registered in Restor, as well as data from more than 60,000 scientists on environmental parameters such as climate, temperature, precipitation, local plant and tree species, soil characteristics and more. READ MORE

AFRICA

Restoring Nigeria’s Lost Ecosystem
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NIGERIA - According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, (IUCN), the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) challenges everyone to massively scale up restoration efforts that breathe new life into our degraded ecosystems. The IUCN contends that ecosystem restoration manifests through actions as varied as new mangroves, grass or other plantings, natural or assisted regeneration, agroforestry, soil enhancement measures, or improved and sustainable management to accommodate a mosaic of land, aquatic, or marine uses. It added that: “Any degraded ecosystem including agricultural areas, savannah, wetlands, protected wildlife reserves, fisheries, managed plantations, riversides, coastal areas, and many others may offer opportunities for improvement through restoration. Ecosystem restoration could focus on re-establishing ecological integrity on a hillside or a seagrass bed to the large-scale landscape restoration of a plateau or mountain range. “There are already millions of hectares of terrestrial and marine ecosystems under restoration across the globe, supported by efforts like the Global Mangrove Alliance and the Bonn Challenge, with contributing regional initiatives such as AFR100 and Initiative 20×20. READ MORE

AMERICAS

Caribbean Utilities Company and “Marvellous Mangroves” Celebrate 20 Years Together
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CAYMAN ISLANDS - The highly successful partnership between Caribbean Utilities Company (CUC) and the Mangrove Action Project’s Marvellous Mangroves Year 5 curriculum is celebrating over 20 years of working together. This programme teaches Cayman’s students about the function and value of its mangrove ecosystems. Executive Director of the Mangrove Education Project, Martin Keeley, estimates that over 15,000 students and more than 200 teachers have experienced the wonders of Cayman’s mangrove forests in the past 20 years. This number also includes many Year 3 classes, which have also experienced the programme. During this time Mr. Keeley explains that the programme has not only relied on the financial support of CUC but also the classroom and logistical support of the National Trust, the Department of Education, Sea Elements and, of course, the many teachers of Cayman’s primary schools. “It was great that CUC joined us earlier this year on a scheduled programme with both Year 5 and Year 3 classes from Sir John A. Cumber Primary School,” Mr. Keeley adds, “It has been part of CUC’s mandate to help support environmental programmes and it is obvious that they are in this for the long run as we continue to learn about the true value of our mangrove ecosystems and efforts to protect and conserve them.” READ MORE

Relict inland mangrove ecosystem reveals Last Interglacial sea levels
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MEXICO - With geological sea-level fluctuations driven by climate change, the distribution of mangrove forests has expanded and contracted through time. We studied an inland, isolated mangrove forest located 170 km away from the nearest coastline in the interior of the rainforests of the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico). Combining multiple lines of evidence, we demonstrate that this extant forest is a relict from a past, warmer world when relative sea levels were 6 to 9 m higher than at the present. Our finding highlights the extensive landscape impacts of past climate change on the world’s coastline and opens opportunities to better understand future scenarios of relative sea level rise. Climatic oscillations during the Pleistocene played a major role in shaping the spatial distribution and demographic dynamics of Earth's biota, including our own species. The Last Interglacial (LIG) or Eemian Period (ca. 130 to 115 thousand years B.P.) was particularly influential because this period of peak warmth led to the retreat of all ice sheets with concomitant changes in global sea level. The impact of these strong environmental changes on the spatial distribution of marine and terrestrial ecosystems was severe as revealed by fossil data and paleogeographic modeling. Here, we report the occurrence of an extant, inland mangrove ecosystem and demonstrate that it is a relict of the LIG. READ MORE

Inland mangroves reveal a tumultuous climatic past — and hint at our future
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MEXICO - Exequiel Ezcurra was dubious when he first heard about the possibility of mangroves on the San Pedro Mártir River in southern Mexico from Carlos Burelo-Ramos, a botanist at Mexico’s University of Tabasco. The red mangrove tree (Rhizophora mangle) does inhabit freshwater environs — Cuba’s Bay of Pigs and the Florida Everglades are two notable examples. But mangroves sitting at least 170 kilometers (106 miles) inland? That seemed unlikely. “You probably got your botanical identification wrong because it doesn’t seem plausible that mangroves are growing in a river with freshwater at such a distance from the coast,” Ezcurra, a professor of ecology at the University of California, Riverside, told Burelo-Ramos. But a confident Burelo-Ramos pushed back, respectfully telling Ezcurra, “I’m a good taxonomist. I know my plants, and this is red mangrove.” READ MORE

ASIA

Women on storm-hit Philippine island lead Indigenous effort to restore mangroves
philippines women
PHILIPPINES - Almost eight years after Typhoon Haiyan barreled into Busuanga Island in the western Philippines, the lesson it left is still etched in the mind of village leader Annabel Dela Cruz. For her and other Indigenous women in the village of Quezon on Busuanga’s northern coast, keeping their mangrove forest intact is now seen as a matter of survival amid the climate crisis. “We were surprised because we were rarely in the path of tropical storms,” said Dela Cruz, recalling the night in November 2013 when Haiyan ravaged this island town. Quezon’s mangrove forest, then classified by the government as logged over, provided Dela Cruz’s community with little protection against strong waves and wind. Many wooden fishing boats and thatch-roofed houses, including Dela Cruz’s, were destroyed. Had they realized earlier how a healthy mangrove forest’s complex root network can shield a community from typhoons, they would have it restored a long time ago, the 56-year-old Indigenous leader said. So, as the villagers gradually got back on their feet, they started shoring up their defenses against future storms by restoring their mangroves. READ MORE

Photos show Manila Bay mangroves ‘choking’ in plastic pollution
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PHILIPPINES - There are stray, abandoned flip flops, old foil food wrappers, crumpled plastic bags, and discarded water bottles. The Navotas mudflats and mangroves in Manila Bay are buried in a thick layer of rubbish. It is “almost choking the mangrove roots,” Diuvs de Jesus, a marine biologist in the Philippines who photographed the area on a recent visit, said. The wetlands are of huge environmental significance. They provide a crucial feeding ground for migratory birds, offer protection against floodwater and help tackle climate change by absorbing far greater levels of carbon dioxide than mountain forests. The plastic pollution, though, could devastate the area. Mangroves have special roots, known as pneumatophores, “sort of like a snorkel that helps them breathe in when sea water rises,” says Janina Castro, member of the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines and advocate for wetland conservation. Plastic risks suffocating pneumatophores, weakening, and potentially killing the trees. READ MORE

In a sea of oil palms, even monitor lizards need islands of natural forest
Malasia
MALAYSIA - The Kinabatangan River rises in the beating heart of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, where ancient primary forest cloaks the slopes of steep-sided mountains. As it meanders east toward the Sulu Sea, the river traverses floodplains overrun by vast monocultures. Regimented rows of oil palms claw at the thin weft of natural forest that lines the Kinabatangan’s course. This fragile lifeline is home to some of the region’s most spectacular species, including Bornean elephants (Elephas maximus borneensis), orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) and proboscis monkeys (Nasalis larvatus). Now, scientists have found that the forested river corridor, designated in 2005 as the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, is also vital for the somewhat less glamorous Asian water monitor lizard (Varanus salvator). As both predators and scavengers, Asian water monitor lizards are known to flourish in human-impacted landscapes, including oil palm plantations, where they thrive on an abundance of leftovers and rodent prey. Prior research has even shown that they fare better in plantations than natural habitats. READ MORE

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URGENT ACTION
BHP: Stop the Greenwash
There is no such thing as ‘green mining’. SIGN OUR PETITION

Strengthen 60 Women Farmers in El Salvador
DONATE HERE

Stop the East African Pipeline that threatens the planet #STOPEACOP – CLICK HERE

Stop construction work on a private port In Defense of the Quilombo Boca Do Rio TAKE ACTION!

Tell Sumitomo to stop building polluting coal power in Bangladesh! TAKE ACTION!



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ORDER YOUR 2022 MAP CHILDREN'S ART CALENDER HERE
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13 Year old Linda Li "Mangrove Adventure" from Kid Dream Art School
LindaLi01-AM 2
WATCH NOW

Restoring natural forests
Restoring The Natural Mangrove Forest
Watch movie

Rufiji-Delta
Community Based Ecological Mangrove Restoration in Rufiji Delta 
VIEW VIDEO

Video: Mangroves for the Future - A look bacK. As the latest phase of Mangroves for the Future (MFF) draws to a close, this video highlights some of the project’s most successful initiatives – from local women supporting national park management in Viet Nam to an island in the Maldives that has become a model for waste management, and everything in between. View Here

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Singing for the Sundarbans WATCH HERE

Entrevista con Monica Quarto del Mangrove Action Project (Spanish language) Oye Aqui


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MANGROVE ISSUES 

Want to learn more about mangroves?Mangrove-education
Our short presentation will give you a better understanding of the issues we are working to solve. WATCH PRESENTATION

What is CBEMR?
Download MAP's 2 page CBEMR Information Sheet containing links to all MAP's CBEMR resources – CLICK HERE
 

View MAP’s uploaded Videos at 
MAP Video Gallery

Question Your Shrimp Consumer/Markets Campaign!  
WATCH VIDEO


Mangroves: Guidebook to MalaysiaClick Here

SHARE MAP'S VISION 
CLICK HERE to watch short introductory video. Together we can work "at the roots of the sea".

Our short documentary, Reducing the Risk of Disaster through Nature-Based Solutions : Mangroves
EPIC-Film 2

 


Marvellous Mangroves Curriculum

The Marvellous Mangroves Curriculum begins with a simple philosophy – getting future generations to not only learn about, but understand the importance of mangrove forests. VISIT

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The award-winning Marvellous Mangroves (MM) curriculum educates children on the importance of mangroves and their ecological functions, teaching them about modern challenges and mechanisms for sustainability. VIEW VIDEO

Marvellous Mangroves Curriculum in Bangladesh - WATCH VIDEO
MARVELLOUS MANGROVES IN BRAZIL
En Portuges

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Marvellous Mangroves – A Curriculum-Based Teachers Guide.


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"Question Your Shrimp" Campaign

Question Your Shrimp - is it really sustainable? Sign the Petition



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Mangrove Action Project

Click here to view past newsletters

 

MAP News Issue #594 - March 23, 2024

Saving Lamu Mangroves: From Futile Photo Ops To Real Progress KENYA - Hundreds flock Lamu County, not only for the beauty of Kenya’s oldes...