An environmental activist has planted 66,000 mangroves along the Suva Foreshore since the beginning of this year and hopes to plant at least 200,200 plants by the end of the year.
Founder of the Happy Mangroves Project in Partnership with OneMateFJ, Salanieta Koro says she started the project because of the amount of evidence there is on the impacts of climate change such as the bushfires in Australia.
While speaking at the Environmental Journalism Network Workshop at the University of the South Pacific, Koro says mangroves are one of the best bio-sequesters as it has one of the highest carbon net productivity among all ecosystems, collecting up to 50 times more carbon than temperate forests and up to 10 times more than terrestrial forests.
She has highlighted that they aim to plant 10,000 mangroves every Sunday at low tide.
Koro says one of the major challenges has been getting volunteers to plant mangroves.
She highlighted that funding for her project and getting seedlings are also a challenge.
She says money is needed to buy the seedlings from the Department of Environment and to transport volunteers.
Koro says they have partnered with a German company that makes bags from recycled plastic bottles who has provided funding to plant the mangroves.
