IT has taken decades to reduce Peake Bay in Clarendon to a graveyard of mangroves — and it could take just as long and even longer for restoration efforts now under way to bear fruit.

Professor Terrence Forrester, chief scientist at The University of the West Indies’ Solutions for Developing Countries (SODECO), last week dramatically described the circumstances which led to the lifeless state of the mangroves in Peake Bay as “death by one thousand cuts”, and underscored that their full restoration might not be achieved until long after the present generation of Jamaicans.

“I think an important concept is resilience because you could say that you know this area, and a storm comes and it blocks up an area and nothing died. How do you explain that? Really it’s death by 1,000 cuts,” Forrester said at the Jamaica Observer Press Club staged last Thursday in collaboration with the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation at Halse Hall Great House in Clarendon.

“I can come and cut you today and you lose blood and you don’t die [but] if I keep cutting you every minute, after a while you lose enough blood and the last cut might be the one that kills you. So, too, mangroves,” added Forrester.

SODECO is partnering with Sugar Company of Jamaica Holdings Limited, National Environment and Planning Agency, Ministry of National Security, Planning Institute of Jamaica, Inter-American Development Bank, and the United Kingdom Government to carry out a US$2.5-million Mangrove Restoration Project.

The project is expected to provide healthier mangroves to more fish and shellfish for local consumption; increase coastal protection against hurricanes and storm surges; and assist with flood regulation and mitigation, and carbon sequestration, which are critical in combating climate change.

Forrester said depending on the impact of weather systems and infrastructure, mangroves might be restored.

“If, due to hurricane or building a road or something, you damage mangroves but the conditions are still hospitable then the trees will grow back. But if the death is associated… with an inhospitable environment, like water that’s too saline, then they won’t grow back — and this is the circumstance we have. You had areas that had one, two, three and four hits, until one time they couldn’t recover,” he said.

At the same time, UWI SODECO Programmes Manager Angeli Williams noted that for the last 20 years there has been degradation of the mangroves in Peake Bay area due to a number of factors.

“I think in 2004 when we had Hurricane Ivan the area could not recover after that. So, for the last 20 years what you’re seeing is a continuous die off and degradation of this area,” said Williams.

“One of the issues we are having is that when we do our baseline assessment and you look at the coast, the coastal and tidal channels are actually blocked so there is no tidal flushing taking place to stabilise the salinity in the area,” added Williams.

She told Observer editors and reporters that mangrove restoration can be achieved with adaptive management of the area.

“There is never going to be a black and white fix for this but we have our plan, we have our scientific data, we did our modelling. So the idea is to start making your first steps, monitor it, see how it worked, what are the lessons learnt.

“A big part of this project is applying the lessons learnt and best practices we see globally to fix this project. So, we are not saying that the first move we make is going to be perfect, but what we are saying is that we will do continuous monitoring so that we can adjust our interventions so that we can get the best possible outcome,” said Williams.

About 1,600 hectares of the 3,500 hectares of mangroves stretching along the coast between Milk River and Salt River in Clarendon have been destroyed by human activity and intense weather systems.