Cebu Daily News staffers plant mangroves to enrich island’s marine ecosystem
To grow a coastal forest, you start by bending over and planting in the soft, wet mud of tidal flats as if you’re “planting rice.”
Staff members of Cebu Daily News did just that yesterday in sitio Tapon, barangay San Vicente in Olango Island, a sanctuary for marine life and migratory birds.
The planting of 3,000 propagules or seedlings of bakhaw (species Rhizopora) adds to an existing mangrove patch that over time will reach full growth in 15 to 20 years.
Mangroves provide a rich ecosystem for fish, crabs, seashells and other marine live as well as a trap for carbon.
A 1.5-hectare area is being rehabilitated by the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) – Visayas, of which CDN is a member. Volunteers are welcome to plant, while the local community maintains the site and harvests the propagules for future planting.
Over 30 CDN staff members from different departments walked about 100 meters from the coastline and treaded into the shallows and sometimes knee-deep mud. It took only half an hour to plant the pointed pods in evenly spaced rows as Rey Perez, PBSP project officer called out “Plant!” then “One step backward” to keep the group planting in unison “just like planting rice”. Each hectare of mangrove can provide 100 kilos of fish catch in the area.
The Olango planting is part of CDN’s advocacy of environment stewardship and one of a series of activities marking the paper’s 15th year.
The CDN team led by vice president for operations Imee Alcantara and publisher Eileen Mangubat was joined by 62-year-old Pentti Aarnimetsa, who is visiting Cebu from Finland where he lives with his Cebuana wife.
¨I’ll definitely come back here and join again,” he said. /Correspondent Tweeny Malinao