Confessions of a Mangrove Hugger

February 18, 2008

Photo by author

Over the winter break, I decided to take a visit to the Sine-Saloum region, several hours south of Dakar, just north of the Gambian border. (The country of Senegal is bisected in a bizarre way by the little independent nation of Gambia, which has its own capital, Banjul. The tiniest country on the African mainland, The Gambia (which only became independent from Britain in 1965) is almost completely surrounded by Senegal. The two countries formed a short-lived confederation during the 80’s and the region is still occasionally referred to as Senegambia (you know, just think ‘Brangelina’).

The Sine-Saloum region is about as different from the hustle and bustle of Dakar as you can get, and it is particularly renowned for its lush mangrove swamps. Note: once upon a time, this area was previously completely covered by them, but that is no longer the case.

Just before embarking on my winter break adventure, I had watched Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth with my English class, and was thus more preoccupied by questions of ecology than usual: it was about time that someone confronted us with the fact of our own culpability. My Senegalese students (who, to be fair, have no experience of snow, for the most part!) do not quite yet see in which ways they themselves might be affected when polar bears drown in their attempts to clamber onto ice floes which crack as a result of global warming. Anyway, I grew fascinated with the mangroves and hence did some research and discovered that concerned individuals had already banded together to protect the mangroves - see for example http://www.mangroveactionproject.org/.

Mangroves, in case you did not know, serve a hugely important function in terms of the ecosystem. They tend to grow in shallow water, where it is soft, muddy and oxygen-poor. However, their intricate root systems, which tend to be visible above ground, permit them to absorb oxygen from the air. Their dense root systems also help to stabilize the shoreline, protecting it from erosion, while serving the further function of helping to protect human lives and property, reducing the damage caused by flooding. Efforts to preserve the mangroves became much better publicized after a 2004 earthquake which triggered a deadly tsunami in Southeast Asia; as so often, it took a disaster before members of the population at large began to focus on the essential role the mangroves play in limiting floodwater damage.

Besides fulfilling this extremely important function, mangroves are also fascinating because whereas most creatures are either land or sea, either salt water or fresh water, the West African mangroves are adapted to living in between salt water and river water, taking in salt water, extracting the needed nutrients and ‘excreting’ the excess salt, thus ‘purifying’ the sea water.

Another astonishing fact is that like mammals, mangroves are vivaporous, meaning that they bear live young (who woulda thunk it?). In addition to being very unique biologically for the reasons outlined above, they play a key role in balancing underwater ecosystems as well as providing a habitat for shrimp, crabs and other forms of marine life. Oysters actually attach themselves to the roots of the mangroves. Moreover, pelicans and bats, monkeys, snakes and water birds are all very much at home in the mangrove swamps.

Mangroves, as we have established, are shallow-water dwellers. The tide already rises a bit higher each year. Given that sea levels will certainly rise over the coming years if global warming continues at its present rate, the mangroves are very much at risk.

Though, as in so many fields of research, studies of the effects of global warming in Africa have been relatively neglected compared to the amount of research done in more temperate areas, the WWF has reported that global warming in general could fundamentally alter one third of plant and animal habitats by the end of this century, causing the extinction of numerous animal and plant species. Mangroves are one of the species most likely to be affected.

Their range has already shrunk considerably, and as with so many other precious natural resources, mangroves have been mismanaged and exploited, cleared by developers and businessmen in order to create shrimp ponds, supply wood for fuel and the like on a massive scale. In Fayako, a town located in Senegal’s Sine Saloum region, the results of this are already clearly visible: as the mangroves have dwindled, local inhabitants are having difficulties finding fish to eat and firewood to burn.

It scares me to think that at some not-too-distant point in time, the photographs I have taken will be historic, something researchers will use to explain to their audiences what it was the mangroves once were.

About the Author : Tamara-Diana Braunstein brings us her stories from Senegal every week. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is a restless wanderer who earned an MA from the University of Freiburg and has worked in a youth hostel in the French Alps, a law firm in Montreal, the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as in university press publishing. At the moment her home base is Dakar, Senegal, where she is supposed to be teaching but is doing far more learning, as you will see by reading her blog at www.senegalschoolmarm.blogspot.com