International Mangrove Ecosystem Day, Group Plant

The ‘International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem’, celebrated each year on the 26th July, aims to raise awareness of the importance of mangrove ecosystems and to promote solutions for their sustainable management and conservation. 

Every year, in partnership with SORCE, the local community raises awareness for mangrove conservation and works together with tourists and private organisations to raise funding to plant mangroves in degraded areas of mangrove forest around Sekotong. Due to the pandemic shutting down tourism, the project has not been able to run as usual. So we are reaching out to you for your help! Donate and join us on the 24th-26th as we plant mangroves with our friends here in Sekotong. 

Mangrove forests are essential and productive ecosystems that provide numerous goods and services to the marine environment and local communities. 

Not only do mangroves provide essential nursery habitats for juvenile fish and invertebrates, without which our fish populations would be drastically reduced, but they also provide a range of other benefits for humans that are less well known amongst the public. Did you know that mangrove habitats provide air and water purification, and through this act as a natural antibiotic for the oceans, removing harmful substances that cause disease in corals? They also secure the soil along coastlines, preventing coastal erosion and protecting our coastal communities and infrastructure from subsidence, storm damage, and flooding. 

They are amazing at carbon sequestration with recent studies showing that they have the capacity to absorb and store up to 4x the amount of carbon as rainforest trees when compared pound to pound. They also have rapid growth rates meaning they can begin to seriously reduce carbon levels that much sooner. 

So if you are worried about your carbon footprint, planting mangroves is an incredible way to offset some of your useage. Not in Indonesia? Not a problem! We'll plant mangroves on your behalf! For every £1 donation that we receive, we will plant a tree in your name.  

This year our Roots to Reef project is hosting a community mangrove plant to celebrate this incredible ecosystem and the huge upscale of our project that has recently been implemented thanks to our new partnership with TreeApp. We're going to live stream at various points throughout the day so make sure to check our social media for details of how to tune in.