Conservation
Planting the red mangrove
Seven years, 62,000 seedlings and what the village taught us.
By the restoration team · 6 minute read · Example figures for this demo
The first nursery was a mistake. We grew three thousand seedlings in a neat shaded bed behind the lodge site, and planted them out in rows on the mudflat in the dry season of 2019. By the rains, most were gone.
Mama Arit, who has fished this creek for fifty years, came to look. She told us, kindly, that we had planted them in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in lines no mangrove has ever grown in.
Learning from the village
Red mangroves drop long seedlings that float until the tide strands them on the right kind of mud. Mama Arit showed us where those places were: just above the low tide line, sheltered by older trees, never on open sand.
She told us, kindly, that we had planted them in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
We now collect fallen seedlings rather than growing them in beds, plant them at the spring low tides, and scatter them the way the creek would. Survival after two years rose from under twenty percent to seventy-four.
Guests in the mud
Every week, guests join our planting team at low tide. It is muddy, slow and surprisingly joyful. Each seedling gets a small tag, and we send planters a photo of their patch a year later.
Since 2019, together, we have planted 62,000 seedlings. The first patch, planted the right way in 2020, now stands taller than a person and is full of young fish.
Mama Arit still comes to check. These days she mostly nods.