The Caribbean mangrove forest that defied destruction

The area is a crucial habitat for several species. Mangrove bouquets attract birds like the egret, heron, bullfinch and hummingbird. Other birds, these types of as the brown pelican and the endangered West Indian whistling duck, use the forest for food stuff and nesting. Fiddler and mangrove tree crabs scurry via the maze of roots, which also offer refuge to leatherback, hawksbill, loggerhead and the unusual environmentally friendly turtles. Around the ocean flooring, the ecosystem is house to massive fish, like snappers and parrotfish, and juvenile fish, like the grouper, which can continue being in the mangrove nursery for more than five a long time.

“Mangroves are vital to our livelihood, primarily for us fishermen,” Harvey states. “Ahead of the harm, there had been nurseries for all maritime life: conchs, lobster, fish, sharks. We fed our family members and offered them to citizens and businesses.”

Harvey, now 62 decades old, is in good shape and slender, a male normally on the go. His toughness and energy were crucial to what took place on Union Island just after the tourism development unsuccessful.

In 1998, 4 a long time following the corporation declared personal bankruptcy, two Canadian researchers, Stephen Selling price and Purnima G Price, declared that Ashton Lagoon was “ecologically useless” in a report for the Union Island Affiliation for Ecological Preservation. Mangrove forests are a notoriously tough ecosystem to deliver again after disturbed, they said, whilst damage to the lagoon program could be reversible “to some extent”.

In an effort to reverse the hurt, Harvey, who was at the time president of the Union Island Eco Tourism Motion, teamed up with Orisha Joseph, director of nearby conservation company SusGren, Lisa Sorenson, a conservation biologist and head of BirdsCaribbean, as nicely as officials of the Eastern Caribbean Coalition for Environmental Recognition.