MAP’s Executive Director, Dr. Dominic Wodehouse, was recently featured in a widely circulated article – along with several other mangrove experts – elucidating the need for utilizing better mangrove restoration methodologies in global conservation efforts. The article was published on news sites such as Knowable, Inverse, and others.
Even as mangroves have increasingly found themselves at the center of the global conservation movement over the past two decades, known mangrove science and ecology often remains disconnected from restoration efforts on the ground. Traditional hand-planting efforts often treat mangroves like terrestrial forestry, and when they ignore the underlying issues of degradation (both ecological and social), these restoration efforts often fail, or fail to meet their objectives. When the wrong species are planted in the wrong places, or are placed in otherwise valuable ecosystems which are not suitable for mangroves, survivorship can be as low as 20% – or none at all.
This is why MAP has developed, advocates for, and teaches the ‘Community-Based Ecological Mangrove Restoration’ (CBEMR) method for naturally regenerating mangrove forests by first addressing the underlying ecological and social conditions that allow for successful mangrove restoration.
