Germana Carillo In Barra de Santiago the local population is fighting to save one of the few remaining mangrove forests, lost to agriculture and urban expansion
@123rf
Barra de Santiago, along the Pacific coastline of El Salvador, has boasted a wide mangrove forest area. This international wetland importance area has been a vital source for the local communities over the past decades, wherein the mangrove ecosystem plays an important role in securing the livelihoods of the inhabitants.
Traditionally, coastal communities in Barra de Santiago depend on mangrove resources for their livelihood through wood, fishing, and two kinds of crabs of commercial value: the blue crab, Cardisoma crassum, and the mangrove crab, Ucides occidentalis. However, the degradation of the manglaves in El Salvador, estimated at over 50% by the Fifth National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity, seriously threatens these populations. It is brought about by different climatic changes apart from over-exploitation of the resources found in these ecosystems.
Importance of mangroves globally
Mangroves are different kinds of trees and shrubs found on tropical coasts in immense numbers around the world, giving life to a wide array of biodiversity. They provide nurseries for fish and homes for a variety of mammals, such as tigers, African wild dogs, and sloths. They also provide a number of key services to people, such as reducing the risk of coastal disasters, storing and sequestering carbon, and maintaining healthy fisheries. Losses are thus catastrophic for both nature and people around the world.
But this vital Central American natural resource is threatened by the climate crisis, rapid urbanization, cattle grazing, widespread deforestation for the sugar cane industry, and increased demand for wood in the country.
Decades of degradation
Since 1950, El Salvador has lost more than 60% of its mangrove forests. In 1982, an earthquake and a tropical storm hitting the coastal region partially destroyed the mangroves in Barra de Santiago, accelerating environmental devastation. Today, the climate crisis is again the number one threat to the mangrove forest, with stronger storms cutting the trees to the ground and rising temperatures putting this home of marine life in peril.
“We have been doing monthly monitoring of water physical and chemical parameters, and during the last four years, we have noticed an imminent increase in the water temperature — even as high as 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) — during the dry season while the rainy season continues with stronger storms that add to the rise in the mortality of species,” says Marcela Díaz, a biologist who works in protected areas for the Salvadoran Ecological Unit and at Barra de Santiago.
As long as development goes along with destruction, through building hotels and houses, nothing is very optimistic,” points out Díaz, referring to the works on the mangrove side, driven by a local economy that has reordered itself under the tourism industry to bear the people.
Because since 2022, it has been part of a “restoration project” by UNESCO; this project will invest, through 2025, in the restoration and conservation of mangroves in Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Panamá, and Perú. It aims to give training and education for the empowerment of local communities-in particular, to the young-to raise awareness of the environmental importance of this ecosystem.
However, degraded mangrove forests in El Salvador can be restored, although the local population has little hope for their recovery.
“With new real estate developments and, besides authorizing new real estate developments in that area, the government is advancing with the construction of roads and tourist infrastructure around the eastern beaches of El Salvador where another large portion of its mangroves is located,” Díaz concludes. The use of pesticides and above all the sugar cane industry make it hard to believe that we could come back to a healthy forest. All our efforts will probably only delay the destruction.
