New projects protect island habitat from India to Spain
Seacology’s board of directors just approved six new projects on islands around the world. These new partnerships with local communities and organizations will protect thousands of acres of habitat.
Several new initiatives concentrate on the protection or restoration of seagrass habitats. Like mangroves, seagrass beds have enormous “blue carbon” capacity. In other words, they sequester large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and ocean, and can trap it for centuries.
See all of our seagrass projects here.
Wandoor Village
South Andaman Island, India
The village will protect 50 acres of forest and four kilometers of the island’s coastline. With a Seacology grant, they will build a training and resource center, where local youth will learn to be forest guides, fishing and snorkeling guides, dive operators, craft-makers, and more. This will help them find decent-paying jobs as tourism increases and they are unable to pursue their traditional fishing and farming livelihoods.
Tang Len Island
Thailand
Rainforest covers most of this island, and patches of mangrove trees line the shore. But what makes it unique is the thousands of red land crabs (endemic to this part of Thailand) that crowd its beaches. The people of Ban Koh Kiem Village have pledged to protect the 494-acre island. With a Seacology grant, they will build a youth environmental education center and host a conservation camp three times a year.
Bogtong
Busuanga Island, Philippines
This community, on Busuanga Island in Palawan Province, has pledged to protect 969 acres of mangroves, reef, and seagrass. A Seacology grant will fund a forest boardwalk and interpretive signs, to foster ecotourism and increase surveillance of the protected area.
Westcott Bay
San Juan Island, United States
This grant will fund a project to reseed 13 acres of Puget Sound with eelgrass, which largely disappeared from the Westcott Bay in 2003. The seagrass will provide food and shelter for wildlife, mitigate erosion and storm damage, and sequester large amounts (compared to other ecosystems) of carbon.
Formentera Island
Spain
In Seacology first project in Spain and in the Mediterranean, our grant will be used to finish mapping seagrass around one of the Balearic Islands. The data will be incorporated into a smartphone app that tells boat crews when they are over seagrass and should not drop anchor.
Sungai Nibung Village
Borneo, Indonesia
This village will protect almost 7,600 acres of mangrove forest for 20 years, aided by Seacology-funded drones and other monitoring equipment. The community will use our grant to build a facility to support a crab nursery, improving the survival rates of crab hatchlings for a sustainable crab fishery.