After trial and error, Mexican fishers find key to reforesting a mangrove havenWhen David Borbón first arrived in the village of El Delgadito i...

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After trial and error, Mexican fishers find key to reforesting a mangrove havenWhen David Borbón first arrived in the village of El Delgadito i...
After trial and error, Mexican fishers find key to reforesting a mangrove haven
When David Borbón first arrived in the village of El Delgadito in 1980, it was a paradise with seemingly unlimited natural resources. He continued to return seasonally to fish for lobster, sea bass and clams.

Located on the Pacific coast of Baja California Sur in Mexico, El Delgadito juts out into the mouth of the San Ignacio Lagoon, one of the winter sanctuaries of the eastern Pacific gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus). It sits within the El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve, a vast semiarid ecosystem with wetlands, marshes and mangroves.

In the early 2000s, Borbón settled there permanently with his wife, Ana María Peralta. But a series of severe weather fronts, bringing heavy rain and powerful winds, combined with overfishing, eroded the shoreline and destroyed the area’s mangrove ecosystems. No longer did it look like the paradise he once knew.

Between 1990 and 2005, the San Ignacio Lagoon experienced a 2,554-hectare (6,311-acre) reduction in mangrove coverage as a result of atmospheric processes, such as hurricanes or low precipitation, as well as human activities, leading to an annual deforestation rate of 3.83%. Without mangroves, fish and shellfish are deprived of food, shelter and protection. Residents of El Delgadito, who depend on fishing to survive, were greatly affected by their decline.

“The profits from fisheries no longer yielded those figures from the ‘70s,” Borbón told Mongabay over a phone call. “It was not profitable to continue overexploiting marine species that were already very, very depleted.”

But Borbón had an idea. Not trained in any way in a science, he became so obsessed with mangroves as a way to buffer against hurricanes and restore the ecosystem that he started experimenting through trial and error how to reforest them. He came up with his own specific methods, which are difficult to replicate in other climates, he said. He had to sit down with the mangroves for hours and study how to replicate their own natural patterns.

David Borbón screens and selects the best mangrove seeds for germination.
David Borbón screens and selects the best mangrove seeds for germination. Image courtesy of David Borbón.
After figuring out the method with the support of Peralta and their daughter, Ana María Borbón Murillo, he began a mangrove reforestation project, which today has been critical to El Vizcaíno, one of Mexico’s largest protected areas. In 2018, one study published in Nature said the family’s method of planting red mangroves’ propagules under natural conditions successfully replanted 30,000 new plants in three years.

So far, the project has planted more than 1.8 million mangroves that have a 92-94% survival rate, Borbón estimated.

“The project carried out by Mr. David Borbón has contributed as a measure of mitigation and adaptation to climate change,” Marco Antonio Gonzalez Viscarra, director of the El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve, told Mongabay over email.

Attached link

https://news.mongabay.com/2024/12/after-trial-and-error-mexican-fishers-find-key-to-reforesting-mangrove-haven/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=Mongabay2021/magazine/Mongabay

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