SALT MARSH, Trelawny — As World Tree Planting Day was observed last Friday, teams from the Discovery Bay Marine Lab and Forestry Department converged on a section of this rural community to continue restoring a section of damaged mangroves.

Their work is part of the ongoing North Coast Mangrove Conservation Project, a collaboration between The University of the West Indies (The UWI), Sandals, and Sandals Foundation, who are the main donors.

The mangroves were removed about two years ago and marl dumped on the land as part of a planned project. As the restoration team worked Friday, academic coordinator for The UWI’s Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory, Dr Camilo Trench spoke of the importance of protecting the mangroves.

“If everybody is allowed to destroy the mangrove then Jamaica is going to be dead. Look at that tree and imagine a hurricane coming in, can it pass through that? No,” he stated.

“However, when you remove the mangrove then this highway is gone,” he warned.

Trench explained that mangroves serve a wide variety of purposes for islands like Jamaica and therefore it is imperative that they be protected.

“The reality is, and one of the socio-economic issues is, that it is a lot easier to dump and live in the wetland areas than to dig down a piece of limestone forest; it is a fact. But the reality is, private sector, businesses, homeowners, Government, we have to do better,” he insisted.

The academic warned that those who continue to flout the rules will face penalties and offered some advice.

“I would say: Protect the mangroves as much as possible. Know your laws, because you can be prosecuted for wetland dumping and mangrove dumping and it can cost you millions of dollars.The mangroves have 200 functions so maximise mangrove conservation as much as possible,” he suggested.

“The Government has a mandate now where, even if you have private lands, you need permission from the Government where you have to do a study and you have to leave some for conservation,” Trench added.

He explained that the once-damaged area in Salt Marsh was subsequently acquired by the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) and is now being returned to its primary use as a home to mangroves.

“We did the heavy equipment work in removing the dumped material and today we are doing some of the fine-tuning work — like we’re scraping down with the shovels and planting some mangrove seedlings in there with the Forestry Department,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

“We are establishing monitoring plots and so this is day one — or time zero as we like to call it. At time zero we like to measure what the plants are like in the area that we are restoring — how many red mangrove, how many black, how many white; what is their height; what is their health; what is the salinity of the water,” Trench explained.

After a year has passed they will once again assess the same plots of land to determine the effectiveness of their intervention.

“We will see if they have grown, see if they would have put on girth; and we’ll see if the same number are here, if they’ve increased or decreased; is the salinity of the water the same,” said Trench.

He added that the Forestry Department was also the recipient of training regarding mangrove replanting, restoration and monitoring.

“They normally deal with the terrestrial forests across the island but they have a mandate now to deal with mangrove forests and so I am doing an on-site training with them today,” said Trench.

For the Forestry Department, this fits in well with its Jamaica Mangrove Plus initiative which was launched last year and through which it identifies locations across the country where restoration of mangroves is needed.

“When persons think of forests, they usually think of the watershed areas, but mangroves, which are in a watered space, is a type of forest. And what we want to do when we think about the overall preservation of our environment and sustaining lives is that you have a lot of communities right here,” stressed Senior Director for Zonal Operations Western, Tamara Nicholson.

She, too, sought to highlight the importance of the wetlands, in particular for people who live and work nearby.

“Whenever the water comes in when you have hurricanes, these are the natural barriers that help to protect the livelihood aspect of it in terms of the fisherman that is here,” she explained

“We had to get involved because this is one of our mandates to take care of the environment, but specifically forests,” Nicholson added.

Staff members from The UWI’s marine lab and the Forestry Department work on restoring mangroves in Salt Marsh, Trelawny, last Friday.