Wednesday, September 19th
We all got up super early for
the reforestation event in the mangroves. Along with about 20 local kids, we
planted cedar, mahogany, and a couple other species. They aren’t mangrove
species, but they are associated with the edges of the mangrove ecosystem.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t rained for about a week and a half, so the soil was
super dry. If it doesn’t rain soon, I’m not sure that the saplings will make
it. We planted a couple thousand trees in about 5-6 hours of work. There were
supposed to be about 80 kids, but the cocode (town council) told the families
to not let their kids go because of the drama surrounding the land we were reforesting.
ARCAS let locals grow corn on the land for awhile, so that it would get used
before it got reforested. Once it came time to reforest, the locals did not
want to leave the land, so they decided to boycott the reforestation. The
situation is unfortunate, but hopefully everyone will end up happy eventually.
At the end, we all got t-shirts as a reward for helping! The kids loved them.
In the middle of planting
The group wearing our new t-shirts
When we got back to the parque,
we went straight into the ocean. All of us were so grimy, dirty, and sweaty that we had to clean and cool off. At night on patrols, there weren’t many
turtles. It was a pretty dull night.
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