Help a community in Mexico plant 50,000 mangroves

During October and November, the project activities focused on (1)  Monitoring the existing plantations to evaluate in general the conditions of the mangroves, (2) Identifying the new 3 hectares for the 2019 plantation and (3) Planting 9,000 propagules in the new identified site to complete a total of 5 planting sites which means  a total of 45,000 mangrove plants. 

We had 2 workshops with the local government of Conquista Campesina (33 ejido members) and the restoration local brigade (3 local people),  to evaluate the general conditions in the field since the weather has been changing a lot. For the past two years, the rainy season starts later during the year and lasts for a longer period. This climate change effects do not affect the existing plants but do affect the new planting activities, since the water levels need to be really low for propagules to germinate. Fortunately, the raniy season finished on time to still have porpaguels available to finish the 2019 plantation on time.  

The regular monitoring activities happend at the end of November, in order to identify if the plants are growing succesfuly and evaluate the mortality rate, in order to replace the plants that have been lost and ensure the density of sites at 3,000 individuals per hectare. Based on these monitoring results, the ejido members have planned a repopulation activity in December to replace the loss of plants that were identified during the monitoring activies.

In January, the ejido members will have a workshop to analyze if they would need to develop hydrological channels to irrigate water to the propagules of the new plantation, in order to have better results.