Little Known Facts About Mangroves - And Why They Matter

Beautiful Mangroves - Tamilnadu

While on trek, across the beautiful coast of Tamilnadu (Muthupet, to be specific), I spotted these magnificent Mangroves. The lush green dense forest caught my eyes (lens, actually!) at once with its varied characteristics. I could see beautifully coloured butterflies, vibrant-yet-admirable birds and the most beautiful aquatic species within the mangrove forest. Immediately, I thought of doing some background research on that and coming up with a blog post. Bare with me for being technical, but I suppose we should be aware of the kind of environmental degradation happening around us. Here we go friends... 

What is Mangrove?

It is a kind of tree or shrub that grows across the coastal area, especially estuaries as it needs both salt and fresh water to survive. It grows across the tropical and sub-tropical region as it requires year-round warm and humid condition. India stands fourth in Mangrove vegetation found across the globe. It accounts 3 % of the world’s and 8 % of the Asian Mangrove.

Why should we protect them?

It has some eye-popping features in terms of Ecology as well as Economy, for protecting them.

As the Ecological importance goes,

·         Maintains coastal water quality and purify water

·         Protects coast from storms, erosion and floods

·         Functions as a nursery for various marine species

·         Important breeding site for birds and fishes

Economic importance are,

·         Construction materials -  houses, fence, furniture and sculptures

·         Food and income – fish, crabs, shrimps, eels harvested

·         Firewood – wood used for fuel

·         Medicine – roots, barks and leaves

Threats that disturb their survival

In recent times, shrimp and fish farm have caught farmer’s attention as it is a very dependable source of income and also required less investment. Right away, coastal areas were cleaned (not in a good note actually!) along with these mangroves and other important species for their farming activities. Besides, they use various insecticides and pesticides for their farm in turn polluting the marine environment and depending aquatic organisms.

Mangrove has its own unique qualities in serving the coastal ecosystem. It acts as a bio-shelter by saving the communities living across the coast from the dangerous natural calamities like cyclone, tsunami, etc. However, it has been degraded to a greater extent in the recent years in the name of infrastructure development, tourism and other human-induced activities. 

What can we do?

Few afforestation activities can be conducted with the assistance of experts, as restoration of degraded mangrove is not an easy job. Let us not dump the waste in the sea or ocean, even it has some beautiful life bearing species. After all, we are not the only species living on earth.

Last but not the least, keep the environment clean people. #SwachBharatAbhiyan