The 12,000-acre Ca­roni Swamp is not on­ly one of Trinidad’s most renowned tourist at­trac­tions and home to our na­tion­al bird, the Scar­let Ibis, but it is es­sen­tial in help­ing our twin is­land re­pub­lic fight the dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects of glob­al warm­ing.

It is feared that if this habi­tat is de­stroyed, the Ibis will mi­grate to breed and leave T&T al­to­geth­er. In ad­di­tion, our frag­ile ecosys­tem needs all the help it can get since this coun­try is con­sid­ered the Caribbean’s largest pro­duc­er of car­bon diox­ide (CO2) emis­sions be­cause of our large in­dus­tri­al plants.

Ac­cord­ing to the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) deputy di­rec­tor and wet­lands ex­pert Dr Ra­han­na Ju­man, be­tween 1994 and 2014 al­most 50 acres of the Ca­roni man­grove have been washed away by coastal ero­sion.

If a more pro­nounced ef­fort is not made to take care of this wet­land, one of three pro­tect­ed un­der the 1975 Ram­sar Con­ven­tion, Ju­man be­lieves the man­groves could suf­fer from “coastal squeeze”.

Coastal squeeze caus­es the man­groves to die be­cause they are caught be­tween coastal ero­sion and man-made de­vel­op­ment.

In the sec­ond part of this Guardian Me­dia spe­cial re­port on the ef­fects of glob­al warm­ing on T&T’s ecosys­tem, a news team vis­it­ed the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary, ac­com­mo­dat­ed by Ju­man and Navin Kalpoo of the Kalpoo Broth­ers’ Tours.

The Ca­roni wet­lands are home to over 150 species of birds, in­clud­ing the Ibis and serves as a nurs­ery for dozens of species of fish and shell­fish. Most re­cent­ly, pink Flamin­gos have been mi­grat­ing to the man­groves from South Amer­i­ca to feed.

But it’s not all beau­ty and breeze at the sanc­tu­ary as the black, red and white man­grove that the birds, fish­es, and shell­fish de­pend on is be­ing erod­ed by the wa­ters of the Gulf of Paria.

Ju­man said hu­man in­ter­ven­tion in­to the nat­ur­al wa­ter­cours­es over the years has led to man­grove dieback.

“The Ca­roni Riv­er is a huge riv­er and about 11 dif­fer­ent rivers flow in­to it from as far as Va­len­cia to San Juan. And over the years what was done for flood mit­i­ga­tion was to deep­en and widen the Ca­roni Riv­er and every time they dredge it, they put the sed­i­ment on the em­bank­ment, so they have diked it. What would have nor­mal­ly flowed in­to the swamp it­self, is now go­ing straight out in­to the Gulf of Paria,” Ju­man said.

“Be­cause they have diked it and it is not get­ting that fresh wa­ter or that tidal flow, you have man­grove dieback be­cause con­di­tions have be­come so salty or what you call hy­per-saline. Sea­wa­ter is nor­mal­ly 35 parts per thou­sand and if it goes up to 90 parts per thou­sand, you will have the man­groves dy­ing."

The rea­son the man­groves die with­out ac­cess to both fresh and salt wa­ter is that the trees de­pend on the sed­i­ment brought by the riv­er to cre­ate mud banks that the trees can colonise.

“In the Ca­roni Riv­er, you have a lot of sed­i­ments com­ing out and be­ing de­posit­ed along the shore­line. Here you don’t have that, so what you find be­tween this riv­er and the Madame Es­pan­gol Riv­er is that we’ve had a lot of man­grove be­ing erod­ed. We have es­ti­mat­ed be­tween 1994 and 2014, over a long pe­ri­od of time, about 20 hectares have been lost due to ero­sion. Out here there is a con­cern that be­cause there is no new sed­i­ment com­ing in­to the area, then you would have some more ero­sion oc­cur­ring.”

But Ju­man said new man­grove trees are grow­ing in ar­eas like Brick­field and Fe­lic­i­ty, where there are mul­ti­ple mud banks cre­at­ed by sed­i­ment. This gives hope that some of the CO2 that T&T pro­duces can be ab­sorbed by the man­grove.

“Man­groves, in par­tic­u­lar, are seen as very help­ful with re­gards to us mit­i­gat­ing against the ef­fects of cli­mate change be­cause they act as a sink for car­bon diox­ide, they se­quester or they suck in CO2 and as you know, part of the rea­son for glob­al warm­ing is the CO2 that is in our at­mos­phere that we pro­duce from our in­dus­tri­al ac­tiv­i­ties, so man­groves have the po­ten­tial to store a lot of this CO2 in their bio­mass and in their soil and in that way they help with re­gards to cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion.”

In ad­di­tion to sink­ing the CO2, man­groves can al­so help mit­i­gate the ef­fects of the ris­ing sea lev­el with their spread­ing roots.

“More im­por­tant­ly, man­groves al­so as­sist us in adapt­ing to the im­pacts of cli­mate change es­pe­cial­ly since we live on a small is­land de­vel­op­ing state and we have very lit­tle space, our coast is very im­por­tant and man­grove, be­cause of their struc­ture, with the roots, they help to break down the ve­loc­i­ty of the wave ac­tion so they tend to pro­tect us against coastal ero­sion and the trees act as a wind­break so they act in re­gards to storm pro­tec­tion.”

She ex­plained that as the sea wa­ter con­tin­ues to en­croach on the land, the man­grove will fol­low it but this can cause a coastal squeeze.

“As the sea lev­el ris­es and wa­ter goes in­land, man­groves will con­tin­ue to grow in­ward with the sea wa­ter, how­ev­er, if there is a build­ing de­vel­op­ment or a high­way that pre­vents the man­grove from ac­tu­al­ly grow­ing on the land, you are go­ing to have a sit­u­a­tion known as coastal squeeze, where you are go­ing to lose all your man­groves and all the func­tions they pro­vide.”

Red tape ties up bound­ary ex­ten­sion

Dr Ju­man told the Sun­day Guardian the cur­rent­ly pro­tect­ed area bound­ary as de­fined by the Forestry Act and Con­ser­va­tion of Wildlife Act was es­tab­lished to pro­tect the Scar­let Ibis'nest­ing sites. But she said the Ibis are now nest­ing fur­ther in­land, away from the pro­tect­ed area.

“The IMA sits on a stake­hold­er com­mit­tee un­der the Im­prov­ing Forestry and Pro­tect­ed Ar­eas Man­age­ment in T&T project (IF­PAM). Un­der this project, they are de­vel­op­ing a Man­age­ment Plan for Ca­roni Swamp and con­sid­er­a­tion has to be giv­en to ex­tend the bound­ary of the pro­tect­ed area land­ward to pro­tect Scar­let Ibis nest­ing sites,” Ju­man said.

But red tape with land ac­qui­si­tion need­ed for the ex­ten­sion is where the process comes to a screech­ing halt.

“How­ev­er, some of the land are pri­vate hold­ings so much dis­cus­sion/le­gal con­sid­er­a­tion must be had on this mat­ter and this has not start­ed,” Ju­man said

Kalpoo: Ibis will leave the sanc­tu­ary

Navin Kalpoo grew up in the Ca­roni swamp­lands, ac­com­pa­ny­ing his fa­ther and grand­fa­ther as they took vis­i­tors on tours through­out the wet­lands to see the stun­ning Scar­let Ibis as they come to roost and breed.

Kalpoo and his broth­er Ravi fol­lowed their fa­ther in­to busi­ness and to­day they are one of the most well-known tour op­er­a­tors in the sanc­tu­ary.

He can point out any type of bird, flo­ra or fau­na and is able to skill­ful­ly nav­i­gate his boat along the sides of the man­grove to give vis­i­tors a clos­er look of the snakes that nes­tle in the branch­es over the wa­ter sun­ning them­selves af­ter large meals.

Kalpoo de­scribed the changes he has seen in the swamp over the years.

“I have seen ar­eas that were marsh­es be­ing over­grown by man­grove and ar­eas that were land are be­ing cov­ered up. We have seen over the years the Scar­let Ibis used to be miles in­to the re­serve area and over the years as the con­di­tions are chang­ing and the birds are mov­ing fur­ther in­land, clos­er to pri­vate prop­er­ty.”

The Scar­let Ibis is an En­vi­ron­men­tal­ly Sen­si­tive Species and from Ju­ly 2018 the law stat­ed that be­ing in pos­ses­sion of even a feath­er of the bird can re­sult in you be­ing fined $100,000 and im­pris­oned for two years.

Al­though Kalpoo said the in­creased fine does have a de­ter­rent ef­fect on poach­ers, he is wor­ried that if the man­groves con­tin­ue to move in­land, the birds will move with them.

“When they are in the sanc­tu­ary, we have a watch­ful eye over them here but in the fu­ture, we have to take an­oth­er look at our bound­aries and re­serve ar­eas be­cause they will be go­ing out in­to pri­vate land and we don’t want that.”

He is al­so wor­ried that if the man­grove con­tin­ues to erode, the Ibis may leave the swamp al­to­geth­er.

“If noth­ing is done soon, the Scar­let Ibis may not stay here be­cause when the con­di­tions for them are poor, they mi­grate to Venezuela to have their young, so we can have a na­tion­al bird that no longer wants to live in the Ca­roni Swamp.”

Kalpoo said he of­ten as­sists the Forestry Di­vi­sion in their thrice-year­ly count of the Ibis. At the last count, he said the birds num­bered be­tween 16,000 to 18,000.

Man­grove dieback in Aus­tralia

Be­tween 2015 and 2016, North­ern Aus­tralia lost 8,000 hectares (19768.43 acres) of its man­grove in one of the world’s worst in­stances of man­grove dieback.

The dieback was blamed on ex­treme tem­per­a­tures, drought and low­ered sea lev­els. It was first no­ticed by tour op­er­a­tors who re­port­ed see­ing skele­tonised man­groves over sev­er­al hun­dred kilo­me­tres. They re­port­ed the trees seemed to have died si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

In Oc­to­ber 2018, sci­en­tists at the James Cook Uni­ver­si­ty vis­it­ed the man­grove but their re­port was grim.

“While there has been lim­it­ed re­sprout­ing with seedling es­tab­lish­ment and re­growth, the re­cov­ery looks like it’s be­ing over­whelmed by ero­sion com­bined with phys­i­cal scour­ing by mass­es of drift logs and branch­es from dead man­groves. Each high tide, dead ma­te­r­i­al scrapes across the seedlings, break­ing and killing them.”

Head of the team, Dr Nor­man Duke la­belled the in­ci­dent as the worse in­stance of cli­mate-re­lat­ed dieback of man­groves ever re­port­ed.

“Es­sen­tial­ly, they died of thirst,” he said.

Sev­er­al key stake­hold­ers are now in­volved in a se­ries of stud­ies in the af­fect­ed area to for­mu­late best-prac­tice plans for the fu­ture.

The Ram­sar Con­ven­tion

In 1971, in Iran, the Ram­sar Con­ven­tion was adopt­ed and since then, over 90 per cent of Unit­ed Na­tions mem­ber states have signed on. T&T signed on in April, 1993. There are three Ram­sar sites across the coun­try—the Ca­roni Swamp, the Nar­i­va Swamp and the Buc­coo Reef/Bon Ac­cord La­goon Com­plex. T&T has 15,919 hectares (39336.7 acres) of wet­lands.

The Ram­sar Con­ven­tion’s mis­sion is the “the con­ser­va­tion and wise use of all wet­lands through lo­cal and na­tion­al ac­tions and in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion, as a con­tri­bu­tion to­wards achiev­ing sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment through­out the world”.

The con­ven­tion recog­nis­es the im­por­tance of wet­lands and al­so their de­struc­tion for man-made de­vel­op­ments.

There are three pil­lars that each con­tract­ing State has agreed to:

•to work to­wards the wise use of all their wet­lands

•to des­ig­nate suit­able wet­lands for the list of Wet­lands of In­ter­na­tion­al Im­por­tance (the “Ram­sar List”) and en­sure their ef­fec­tive man­age­ment

•to co­op­er­ate in­ter­na­tion­al­ly on trans­bound­ary wet­lands/s.

Man­grove con­ser­va­tion

The Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme (UN En­vi­ron­ment) lists two types of con­ser­va­tion for man­grove wet­lands.

The first and most com­mon, is de­clar­ing man­groves pro­tect­ed, there­fore lim­it­ing the ef­fects of hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty.

The sec­ond is to re­plant and re­plen­ish the man­groves. But UN En­vi­ron­ment warns that if re­plant­i­ng is the method be­ing used, that stake­hold­ers must first ad­dress is­sues that caused the man­grove to die be­fore any re­plant­i­ng can be done.

Plant­i­ng is of­ten used as a restora­tion tech­nique, al­though, man­grove restora­tion can oc­cur nat­u­ral­ly in 15-30 years if the tidal hy­drol­o­gy of the site is not dis­rupt­ed and if there is a good sup­ply of wa­ter­borne seeds or seedlings. Suc­cess­ful restora­tion re­quires an un­der­stand­ing of the caus­es of man­grove loss. If the caus­es are not ad­dressed, then re-es­tab­lish­ment may not be ef­fec­tive. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant if one of the caus­es is hy­dro­log­i­cal change.

The fol­low­ing five steps were tak­en from a man­u­al pub­lished in 2006 by the Man­grove Ac­tion Project in In­done­sia.

5 crit­i­cal steps for man­grove restora­tion

1. Un­der­stand the aute­col­o­gy (in­di­vid­ual species ecol­o­gy) of the man­grove species at the site; in par­tic­u­lar the pat­terns of re­pro­duc­tion, propag­ule dis­tri­b­u­tion, and suc­cess­ful seedling es­tab­lish­ment.

2. Un­der­stand the nor­mal hy­dro­log­ic pat­terns that con­trol the dis­tri­b­u­tion and suc­cess­ful es­tab­lish­ment and growth of tar­get­ed man­grove species.

3. As­sess mod­i­fi­ca­tions of the orig­i­nal man­grove en­vi­ron­ment that cur­rent­ly pre­vent nat­ur­al sec­ondary suc­ces­sion (re­cov­ery af­ter dam­age).

4. De­sign the restora­tion pro­gramme to re­store ap­pro­pri­ate hy­drol­o­gy and, if pos­si­ble, utilise nat­ur­al vol­un­teer man­grove propag­ule re­cruit­ment for plant es­tab­lish­ment.

5. On­ly utilise ac­tu­al plant­i­ng of propag­ules, col­lect­ed seedlings, or cul­ti­vat­ed seedlings af­ter de­ter­min­ing (through steps a-d) that nat­ur­al re­cruit­ment will not pro­vide the quan­ti­ty of suc­cess­ful­ly es­tab­lished seedlings, rate of sta­bil­i­sa­tion, or rate of growth of saplings es­tab­lished as ob­jec­tives for the restora­tion project.