A Dream for a Better World

Mangroves can be described as ‘rainforests by the sea’.  Large stretches of the sub-tropical and tropical coastlines of Asia, Africa, Oceania, the Americas and the Caribbean are fringed by mangroves, once estimated to cover an area of over 32 million hectares.  Now, less than 15 million hectares remain —less than half the original area.  The depletion of the world’s mangroves is due to excessive shrimp farms, tourist complexes and intense land development.  According to the latest study by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the current rate of mangrove loss is around 1% per annum—or around 150,000 ha of new mangrove area loss per year.  Now, the Mangrove Action Project (MAP) is working with other organizations in the global South towards restoring degraded and cleared mangrove areas as a high priority.  MAP is especially interested in restoring some of the 250,000 ha of abandoned shrimp farms located in former coastal wetland areas, especially in Asia and Latin America. But, even more importantly, MAP is working to help conserve and protect existing mangrove wetlands around the world.

A national effort among many institutions is underway to save America’s most endangered plants.  The Center for Plant Conservation (CPC) and its network of 36 institutions have quietly been working for the past 24 years to secure seed of the nation’s most vulnerable and valuable native plants, learn about them, then grow and restore them in the wild. Many of these species have fallen to such low numbers in their habitats that active restoration work, using material from the CPC seed bank, is necessary to prevent their extinction.  Currently, the number of plant species safeguarded in seed banks and living collections has passed the 700 mark. The Collection has over nine million seed providing a working seed bank for restoration of the vulnerable native plants of the United States.