Mangroves serve as a natural buffer to coastal communities in times of natural disaster, as well as provide a habitat for marine life near the coast. But there is a thin line between development and balance and with the ever-growing demand for more high-rise resorts and luxury stays in tourist destinations, there is a constant struggle for balance and managing the natural buffer that mangroves provide. In this week’s edition of Belize on Reel, News Five’s Marion Ali looks at the delicate harmony between both. Here’s that report
Marion Ali, Reporting
Mangroves provide a natural shield when hurricanes bear down on coastal communities. They protect against the force of tidal waves and wind. But a lot of Belize’s mangroves are being destroyed, wantonly in many cases, for the sake of development. There is a conscious effort on the part of the government to reverse that trend by implementing new measures.
Orlando Habet, Minister of Environment
“In our Bond Challenge Project, the restoration of a hundred and thirty thousand hectares of degraded lands and that also includes some mangrove restoration. I think it’s around six thousand acres of mangroves that will be restored and implanted between now and 2030. So we have a restoration desk at the Department of Environment and they are now fully involved, fully engaged, trying to start the project, but it is going to be a collaboration with the private sector, with the N.G.O.s who are working on there, for example, certain regulations that regulate the use and you say tearing down of the mangroves, especially in areas where you have these developments for tourism, especially of housing in the cayes and coastal areas.”
Nadia Bood, Senior Program Officer, Marine Science & Climate Change, WWF, Belize
“A key project that we are undertaking right now is looking at mangrove land tenure ship to understand, you know, who owns the private – to what extent, what percentage of mangroves in the country is in private hands. and it’s really important understand what percentage is still state-owned, where we can have some interventions. Our original estimation before we commenced this research is that you know somewhere in the vicinity of seventy percent of Belize’s coastal zone is in private hands, so that begs the need, you know, for us to work with these landowners because that will only put additional pressure on the existing mangroves that we have.”
Monique Vernon, Coral Practitioner, Fragments of Hope
“I don’t know of any actual method, like they don’t come and say, well, this is how to properly trim a mangrove. I don’t know of any documents or anything to that effect, so with this training that -with this collaboration that Fragments of Hope has with Strong Coast, more than likely, I would be trained into how to properly trim mangroves among other people and then that way we could come and train other people in Belize how to do that because from what I understand, mangroves can’t be cut any kind of way. It’s not like the normal trees you see out here. If you cut it in a bad way, the whole thing can die.”
Kent Garbutt, Asst. Lab Technician, CZMAI
“We’re using the method called the Riley Encasement Method, I mus say of some sort because I have altered it to suit this area. So, the Riley Encasement Method is basically having something to enclose the mangroves in – a pipe, a bamboo, something of that nature. So basically it’s just cutting the pipe or the bamboo in the middle, facing it to the land because we want the water to go in but we don’t want a lot of water to go in.”
“That is part of our problem – personnel. We have to have more personnel to be able to monitor and have compliance ongoing. We will have to submit the request to Cabinet for support for funding for additional personnel that we can place at least one other person down south and possibly one in the north. We have the areas of Placencia, Hopkins, and other small islands where we have a lot of development, so we need that kind of monitoring and compliance.”
Marion Ali for News Five.