Taiwan Mangrove Restoration Project a Success
Seacology, together with Nu Skin Taiwan, has led a major cultural change in the Republic of China's approach to mangroves, reports Seacology chairman Paul Cox.
"It all began with a reforestation project with the Tayo aboriginal people in the mountains of Taiwan," Cox reports. "John Chou and I spent several days with the Tayo people, who I discovered speak a language with strong similarities to Polynesian languages. Within a few days, I was able to hold simple conversations with the people in their own language. Seacology and Nu Skin Taiwan agreed to jointly fund a forest restoration project in which together with the Tayo people we planted 100,000 trees."
While Taiwan needs to conserve inland forests, Cox was also thinking about implementing the Seacology scientific advisory board's suggestion to conserve mangroves, coastal species of trees that provide a biological interface between the sea and the land. Within the last decade, half of all of Taiwan's mangrove areas have been destroyed for land reclamation and shrimp farming. As a result the coastal ecology, including bird populations, fishing success, and invertebrate communities have suffered.
"In the course of a ceremony commemorating the planting in the Tayo area, I met the director of forestry for all of Taiwan, and proposed that we work together in protecting Formosan mangroves," Cox said.
With Seacology providing matching funds, John Chou commissioned a Mandarin language film on mangrove conservation. The film has been repeatedly shown on national television and became the fourth most popular film in all of Taiwan. The National University organized, with Seacology, an international conference on mangrove conservation attended by representatives from Singapore, Thailand, Burma, Australia and the United States.
"At the beginning of the symposium, I presented to the Minister of Agriculture seeds of the two extinct species of mangroves that have disappeared from Taiwan. I told him, in both English and in a short Mandarin speech I rehearsed carefully before the event, that Seacology wished to restore part of Taiwan's heritage. It was an electric moment, and one that played heavily on the national news. As a result of these efforts, five new mangrove preserves have been established by the government, and 10,000 mangrove trees have been planted," Cox recounts.
Seacology wishes to assist many other island nations in setting up mangrove preserves and in educating the public about the importance of mangrove conservation.
