SANIBEL, Fla. — You may remember a story, Fox 4 told you about this past fall, about the Adopt a Mangrove Program through the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation.
THROUGH THIS PROGRAM THREE MANGROVES WERE ADOPTED BY FOX 4 AND METEOROLOGIST ANDREW SHIPLEY, AND ON THURSDAY THEY ARE FOUND THEIR FOREVER HOME ON SANIBEL. WATCH BELOW:
“The plan is we are going to plant over 2,000 mangroves at this site in Clam Bayou, which is on the west end of Sanibel,” Kealy Pfau, SCCF’s Coastal Watch Director.
This area of beach, not far from Blind Pass, lost nearly all it’s mangroves from our recent hurricanes. And with the help of volunteers, SCCF, the City of Sanibel, and clothing company MANG, thousands of mangrove seedlings will cover a portion of beach.
“Mangroves are our first line of defense,” said Pfau. “They are our shoreline warriors. They take the brunt of the wind, the water, and the surge. And they can only handle so much.”
With Sanibel seeing direct impacts from Ian to Milton in last three years, the mangroves on the island are in bad shape.
“They get damaged to the point where they can’t restore themselves or they are not going to come back or they die,” said Pfau. “And it leaves these barren areas that we can come in and restore with seedlings.”
That’s where Fox 4 and Shipley stepped in to plant the three red mangroves they have been fostering as part of Adopt a Mangrove Program since December.
“We pot up these baby mangroves for the community to foster and care for over the season,” said Pfau. “And once they get to certain size they bring them back to us to be planted at restoration sites like this one.”
But once they planted, it will still take quite some time for them to be fully grown.
“It takes about 15 to 20 years for them to get to the mature trees that we think about along our shoreline and what this area looked like before Ian,” said Pfau. “So, it will take a while. And that is without us having stress events after stress events.”
Pfau says the seedlings really need a few quieter hurricane season, just like the rest of us.
While SCCF says most of the volunteer slots are full this weekend to plant the mangrove seedlings, Pfau says that a short walk up from Bowman’s Beach if you want to wish good wishes on the mangroves. And you if would like be part of the Adopt a Mangrove program, it will start up again this coming Fall.
