World’s Mangroves Struggling for Survival By Michael A. Bengwayan

International Day of Mangroves

World’s Mangroves Struggling for Survival

By Michael A. Bengwayan

The remaining mangrove ecosystem the world over, is  facing serious destruction, much of which may be irreversible.

This   sad assessment greeted the International Day of Mangroves on July 26,   from marine biologists and environmentalists worldwide  who are  studying the effects of human  activities on mangrove forests.

More than  35 per cent  of the world’s mangrove forests have been lost in the past two decades, losses that exceed those for tropical forests and coral reefs, deplored Dr. Ivan Valiela,  professor of biology at the Boston University Marine Program and American Institute of Biological Sciences.

And that is not all. Close to 40  per cent of the remaining mangrove forests suffer from human alterations created by conversion of mangroves to mariculture, agriculture, and urbanization, as well as forestry uses and the effects of warfare, Prof. Valiela revealed.

The loss of mangroves is  serious and continuing at rate of approximately 1 per cent yearly which is 3 to 5 times higher than the overall of global forest loss, he said.

Mangrove forests, vital ecosystem in the  important tropical environment,  has received much less publicity  regarding their destruction,  compared to forests being felled and coral reefs undergoing bleaching such that concern about the magnitude of losses of mangroves has been voiced mainly in the specialized literature, the marine biologist lamented.

 Importance of Mangroves

Mangrove forests  are vital in providing breeding, sanctuary and habitat for fish and many forms of marine life. 

They are sources of important medicine for the human world,  and provide a wide range of goods to human communities such as wood and non-wood forest products.

More importantly, they play a crucial role in carbon dioxide sequestration, cooling of the earth, natural buffers against tsunamis and coastal protection, recreation, ecotourism, and as nursery and feeding grounds.

Distribution

The World Mangrove Atlas shows mangroves are distributed in 123 countries in the world with Asia having the most followed by Africa,  north and central America, Oceania and South America.

By region, Southeast Asia has the most mangroves, followed by South America, north and central America, west and central Africa and South Asia, Australasia, east and south Africa,  Pacific Ocean and the Middle East. East Asia has the least area of mangroves.

Indonesia has the largest mangrove area with 31,894 square kilometres and Colombia has the least with 4,079 square kilometres.

Mangrove Destruction

According to Prof. Dr. Shigeyuki Baba,  Executive Director of the International Society for Mangrove Ecosystems  (ISME) based in  Okinawa, Japan, from 1980-2005, the worst mangrove destruction happened in East Asia where 33.4 per cent of its total mangrove area was lost.

Next is the Pacific Islands which lost 28.8 per cent, Southeast Asia, 26.5 per cent; north and central America,  23.3 per cent and South Asia, 17 per cent.

Mangrove forests have been depleted and subjected to various stresses originating from human activities, Prof. Baba said. 

The Working Group on Mangrove Ecosystems of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Commission on Ecology in cooperation with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Wildlife Fund  (WWF) said  globally,vast  mangrove areas are being destroyed  intentionally and as a secondary result of other activities, largely economic in nature.

It said,  over-exploitation by traditional users the primary reason. And  as the world population sky-rockets, pushing resource extraction to the limits, destructive action resulting from clear-felling,  diversion of freshwater, conversion to agriculture and aquaculture,  salt ponds, settlement mining /mineral extraction, liquid waste disposal,  solid waste/garbage disposal, bomb tests, and spillage of oil and hazardous chemicals are threatening to wipe out all mangrove forests, it warned. 

Sand Mining a Growing Threat

The world’s growing need for sand  to whet  its appetite for the construction of urban infrastructure is  the latest dagger to the mangrove heartland . 

In  Puerto Rico, mining for sand and the removal of most of a coastal dune for the construction of a large airport led to the eventual destruction the last mangrove tract in northern Puerto Rico. 

As a result, winter storm waves breached the residual dune on repeated occasions and large amounts of sand were washed into the adjacent mangrove swamp. 

Defoliation rapidly ensued and trees died where sand deposition was in excess of 30 cm. 

Mining of sand from coastal dunes or from offshore structures which shelter coastal mangrove swamps continue to this day , if it does not stop, the damage will be irreversible.

Mangrove  Depletion Due to Charcoal-Making

In the Philippines, mangrove destruction for fuel and charcoal-making has depleted  wide tracts of mangrove forests nationwide, Silliman University Marine Biology Masteral students Frances T. Bengwayan  and Marjho Cardoza  said in their report Current Status and Threats of Philippine Mangals .

They said the Philippines currently has thirty to forty mangrove species belonging to fifteen families which makes the nation one of the top 15 most mangrove rich countries in the world. It holds at least 50% of the world's approximately 65 mangrove species.

But many of these are now struggling to survive against human-induced destructive activities, they added.

Of the estimated 250,000 hectares of mangrove forests, only 80,000 hectares  are left, 40,000 hectares  of which are found in Palawan, Bengwayan and Cardoza said.

The loss is a result of a mangrove depletion rate of 2 per cent to a high of 8 per cent in some areas  annually for the past ten years, they said.

And charcoal making is a major culprit, kept alive by the millions of  rural and urban poor who rely heavily on charcoal for energy needs in this non-oil and non-petroleum producing  country enslaved by expensive fuel imports. 

Killing Fish to Raise Fish

Fishponds in the Philippines are predominantly used for the culture of Milkfish  or Chanos chanos.  The rapid development has led to the area devoted to fishponds where mangroves that bred non-fishpond denizens were destroyed to give way to milkfish production.  From 1950 to 1962, some 70,000 ha of mangroves were converted into fishponds.

 As of 1981,  there are 3,300 fishpond operators raising milkfish in 70,300 ha  which were once mangrove areas. 

The conversion of additional mangrove lands into fishponds  increased fish production from aquaculture,  but decreased production from coastal fisheries. 

2004 Tsunami, 2013 Typhoon Haiyan Breathes Life for Mangroves

They say that nature is the best teacher and indeed, humans have learned the hard way after  the chilling 2004 tsunami and 2013 typhoon Haiyan left thousands dead in Asia.

Once more people were planting trees in their mangroves from Sri Lanka, Thailand to the Philippines.

They fully realized that mangroves form low-lying thickets that hug the shore and protect coastal areas  from storms, hurricanes typhoons and storm surges in tropical regions around the world. 

They serve as natural barriers that help dissipate swelling sea waters propelled by rocket-fast wind and gales.

By realizing this,  and acting pro-actively, perhaps people need not to be reminded now and then that caring for the earth is as important as their other basic needs, without death rearing its ugly head.

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With Frogs, Who Needs Dengvaxia? By Michael A. Bengwayan, Ph.D. Environmental Resource Mgm’t Earth Times

With Frogs, Who Needs Dengvaxia?

By Michael A. Bengwayan, Ph.D. Environmental Resource Mgm’t
Earth Times

Humans never learn.   All of nature by God’s design  is medicine.  But we chose to kill our frogs with pesticides then make some 800,000 children as guinea pigs. All for sake of money.

For that  the Philippines is faced by a nightmare from a medicine  called Dengvaxia,  falsely trumpeted by its past leaders as a silver bullet against dengue. 

Today, Dignay (not his real name) and twelve other children are dead. All took the questionable vaccine. The fate of thousands of children more hangs in the balance.

But who needs  Dengvaxi when we have frogs?

Vanishing Frogs

Unfortunately, frogs, the best defense against mosquitoes, are struggling to stay alive in this world.

Dengue is a tropical disease caused by a virus of the mosquito Aedes Aegypti These mosquitos were traditionally controlled by frogs.

With the rainy season setting in, the carrier of the deadly virus, Aedes egypti, is multiplying by the millions;  and scientists and  local communities, racing against time, want to turn back to frogs for help after man-made medicine is failing.

Saving the Frogs an Uphill Climb

“Many communities now realize they have to be a part of nature and not apart from it to exist today given all the diseases and ailments that are occurring,” Dr. Grace Taguba Bengwayan, BSU professor told this autho while observing the large crowd that participated in the International Save the Frogs Day.

“But it will be a long fight to bring back the once-plentiful frog population,” she lamented.

Her statement stems from another scientist’s discovery that not only frogs but all the amphibian population in the Philippines is on the verge of being wiped out.

Philippines’ amphibian specialist, Dr. Letecia Afuang, said the Philippine amphibian population have drastically gone down in the past twenty years.

Afuang, a professor at the University of the Philippines at Los Banos (UPLB) and in charge of the assessment of conservation status of Philippines amphibians said that there is a lack of awareness in the broader Filipino community of Philippines amphibians and their relevance, leading to the destruction of the creatures.

She noted with approval the efforts being launched by BSU and the communities around it in saving the frogs, but equally warned there is grave danger of an outbreak of diseases in other places in the Philippines where many amphibians and reptiles are becoming extinct.

This is because the population of disease-transmitting insects and vectors is increasing and spreading while their traditional predators are dwindling in number.

“As a result, mosquitoes, including the malaria-transmitting Anopheles and the deadly dengue-causing Aedes Aegypti, are multiplying in great numbers further endangering the health of thousands of not only Filipinos but Asians,” Afuang said.

Bengwayan and Afuang believe bringing back the frogs which used to abound in the land with the communities’ help.

Dr. Luciana Villanueva, former BSU’s vice president for research and extension pointed out to this author, “We have no other recourse but to turn back to nature for help. The frogs are our most effective allies in the fight against the fearsome Aedes egypti mosquito.”

“We are rallying communities not to kill the frogs by not using insecticides for the fourth successive year and positive results are showing,” she added.

Villanueva informed that BSU team encourage locals to make ponds for frogs to naturally set in. They are also distributing pairs of male and female frogs to farmers and hobbyists.

Villanueva led scientists, community leaders, citizens and students last April 30 to celebrate and strengthen the annual International Save the Frogs Day which coincided with Earth Day.

BSU has set up a very large frog pond to increase frog population. “The population of frogs in the Philippines has decreased because of pesticides that destroyed large tracts of frog habitat”, she stressed.

“It must be brought back by urging communities to care for the remaining frogs, maintain a clean environment and through the passage and implementation of strict frog conservation laws,” Villanueva hoped as many students exhibited several ways in saving the frogs through posters, essays, poems, slogans, video and graphic illustrations..

Global Warming Increase Mosquitoes and Kills Amphibians

The highly proactive  environmental NGO Cordillera Ecological Center (CEC) based in the province on the other hand said through a statement released on Earth Day last year that the issue of Aedes egypti mosquito population increasing is due to global warming and death of its natural enemies..

CEC stated “Dengue epidemic in the Philippines occur annually in the later half of the year following onset of rainfall and increasing temperature.  It becomes more pronounced on El Niño periods.”

“It is then important to have a moving average temperature (MAT) index yearly so that it becomes a signal or early warning device to the public  that dengue will not only be a possibility but  will be widespread in nature,” CEC explained.

“Unfortunately, the rapid rise of Aedes egypti’s population is being aggravated by the disappearance of many mosaquito predators like  frogs, lizards, spiders, salamanders and other beneficial small wildlife, “ CEC said.

The CEC won the World Bank Environmental Award in 2008 for being able to determine the onset and spread of dengue-carrying mosquitoes by studying temperature increases.

“The rise of temperature favors disease-carrying insects while equally threatening beneficial small wildlife like amphibians and reptiles that prey on insect pests. For instance, four frogs are now extinct in the country. Global warming and chemicals have destroyed their habitats,” CEC emphasized.

The Declining Amphibian Population Task Force (DAPTF) of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) supports CEC’s revelation, saying ionizing radiation of ultraviolet B resulting from ozone layer depletion has something to do with the decline of amphibian population.

The decline of amphibian population  worldwide, is overly evident in the Philippines.  IUCN named the Philippines as one of the world’s top twenty biodiversity hotspots because of numerous extinct and vanishing living species.

And if the frogs aren’t saved, they may just end up in the long list of IUCN’s Red Handbook of extinct animals.

NO LEADER SERIOUSLY TALKING ABOUT PHL ENVIRONMENT

NO LEADER  SERIOUSLY TALKING ABOUT  PHL ENVIRONMENT

By Michael A. Bengwayan, Ph.D. Environmental Resource Mgm’t

When we put economy over ecology, then we just destroyed the future.There are no truer or more prescient words, yet no one is talking about this with urgency.

The  environment is the driving force on which the future of this planet rests. And yet, daily our leaders are focused exclusively on the economy or plain loco politics, to the almost complete exclusion of the ecology. The Congress is in effect an economists and bureaucrats’ forum where the larger natural environment has been given short shrift.

Climate change and global warming have been reduced to just two more stock market indices and are being computed only in terms of their impact on GDP percentages, industrial growth, unemployment figures. food production. climate refugees, the optimum mix of energy types, and so on. We do not see a convergence  between the threatened environment and the need to put economy’s gains to preserve it.

No one is talking about the threat to the natural environment or ecology which has sustained man ever since he crawled out of the sludge millions of years ago: the forests, rivers, wetlands, glaciers, mountains, snowfields, coral reefs, and the flora and fauna that depend on them.

The problem has been reduced to a mathematical formulation- 2* C temperature rise, and the solution to a catch phrase- " carbon space." As if the capping of green house gas emissions is all that is required to save the world.

What about the rampant destruction of our ecology? Forests which hold the soil, retain water, give us oxygen, absorb carbon: is  the Paris accord aware that our existing forests contain more carbon than what is present in the world's atmosphere? Rivers which nurture civilizations but are being dammed and polluted out of existence? The wetlands which control floods and erosion and provide livelihoods to millions? The mountains which moderate climate and control run-offs?  Our coral reefs which not only shelter islands but also provide a unique eco-system for marine life, but are now being obliterated by pollutants and chemicals in the oceans? And finally, what about the mind boggling diversity of animal life which these natural wonders contain, doomed to extinction not because of green house gases but because of our ruthless greed and apathy?

   Here is what is happening to them:

* Philippines lost an average of 262,500 hectares of forest per year. This amounts to an average annual deforestation rate of 2.48%. Between 2000 and 2005, the rate of forest change decreased by 20.2% to 1.98% per annum. In total, between 1990 and 2005, Philippines lost 32.3% of its forest cover, or around 3,412,000 hectares. Measuring the total rate of habitat conversion (defined as change in forest area plus change in woodland area minus net plantation expansion) for the 1990-2005 interval, Philippines lost 7.9% of its forest and woodland habitat. 

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*  the Philippines is the "hottest" of the 25 so-called "bio-diversity hotspots" in the world - a record that does not speak well of the government's environmental conservation program and the public's apathy to environmental concerns. Hotspots are areas with the least number of species existing, the least number of species found in an exclusive ecosystem and have an alarmingly high degree of threat against the existing species.
 

* 29,817,000 hectares are suffering from uncontrolled deforestation especially in watershed areas; soil erosion; air and water pollution in major urban centers; coral reef degradation; increasing pollution of coastal mangrove swamps that are important fish breeding grounds. 

 There is a contempt and disregard for the natural ecology in the Philippines. The regulatory mechanism to protect the environment set up by enlightened individuals and the courts is being dismantled under the garb of " ease of doing business".

Roads are being allowed in National Parks and  trees are being cut mercilessly. Commercial gardeners are destroying natural habitats, the sanctity of buffer zones are being violated, mining is being permitted in hitherto " no go" areas, river-linking projects are being rammed through without any environmental studies, the Forest Rights Act has been deliberately diluted to enable easier diversion of forest land for industry.  

Our  4 billion years old world is dying in just less than  a thousand years of man’s existence. the Philippines in just 500 years since Magellan landed. There is no Earth B, no Philippines B. Once we destroy the environment, where will we go? Where  will the unborn go?