Half a million mangrove propagules went in before the rains
The Sahy cooperative planted 520,000 mangrove propagules along the Mahajamba estuary in eleven days, beating the wet season by a week.
Mangroves are fussy about timing. Plant too early and the propagules dry out on the mud. Plant too late and the first floods carry them off before they have rooted. The window on the Mahajamba estuary is narrow, and this year the Sahy cooperative read the tides and the sky and went hard for eleven days.
The 520,000 figure is the count off the cooperative's own tally sheets, propagule by propagule, across roughly 90 hectares of intertidal flat. Most of the planters were women from four villages on the estuary. They were paid a day rate that beats what the crab market pays, which this year mattered more than usual after a thin crab season.
The first rains came a week after they finished. That margin is the whole game. A storm crossing the flats before the propagules anchor can undo a fortnight's work in an afternoon, and we have watched it happen on this coast before.
Mangroves earn their place here for two plain reasons. They lock away carbon faster than almost any forest on land, holding most of it in the mud rather than the wood. And they break the storm surges that have been chewing into the coast and salting the rice paddies behind the villages.
We are honest that survival is the number that counts, not the number planted. A planting figure is a promise. Survival is the result. On past plantings here we have seen anywhere from half to three quarters of propagules make it through the first year, depending on the mud and the weather.
We will count survival in October, walking transects across the same flats. Dona Marlene's nursery work is far from here, but the principle is the cooperative's everywhere we operate: the people who plant are paid to care whether it lives.
