A Philippine community sees life-saving payoffs from restoring its mangroves

For more than 30 years, a community in the central Philippines has been actively involved in reforesting and protecting a mangrove site, which has expanded from 50 hectares to 220 hectares (124 acres to 544 acres). Their efforts have resulted in the successful transformation of a once-barren mudflat into one of the few remaining large patches of mangrove forests in the country. Replanting the mangroves has paid off, with the forest shielding the community from the extreme impacts of the typhoons that routinely tear through the Philippines. While the community has successfully managed the mangrove reserves, it continues to grapple with illegal fishing, cutting of mangrove for fuelwood, and climate change. AKLAN, Philippines — In December 1989, Elizabeth Ramos, now 63, heard from a neighbor that a mangrove reforestation project was underway near her home in the province of Aklan in the central Philippines. The meeting Ramos joined that day was for a reforestation effort by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), which had hired 30 local families to plant 50 hectares (124 acres) of mangroves in the mudflats of the adjoining villages of Old and New Buswang. Ramos was not one of the villagers originally selected […]

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