Johann Earle at AlertNet (“the world’s humanitarian news site”) has a timely article on efforts to protect mangroves along coasts.
“Keeping coastal mangrove forests intact or replanting them is cheaper than building man-man structure to protect coastlines threatened by climate change, according to the head of the International Union for Conservation for Nature (IUCN).
“ ‘Our message is,”Don’t assume that man-made or engineered solutions are the only ones to protect our coasts and rivers and to provide drinking water. We are not against engineering in the absence of natural solutions, but look at what nature has to offer,” ‘ ” urged Julia Marton-Lefevre at the recent World Conservation Congress in South Korea.
“Preserving mangrove forests can help regulate rainfall patterns, reduce the risk of disasters from extreme weather and sea level rise, provide breeding grounds for fish and capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to slow climate change, she said. That suggests preserving them will be essential to fighting climate change and protecting lives and livelihoods in the face of climate shifts already underway.
“ ‘Standing trees help us with inevitable climate change,’ she said. ‘Keeping mangroves intact on the coast is not only good for capturing and storing carbon but also very useful for protecting the coast in times of extreme weather conditions and acting like nurseries for fish to ensure people have protein to eat,’ she said.” More here.
Any chance of planting mangroves around Manhattan Island? How about Fire Island? We need something comparable in cooler climes.
Photograph of a mangrove plant on the shore in Cancun, Mexico: REUTERS/Gerardo Garcia
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
This opinion in New York Times calls out another valuable friend for preserving coastlines.. oysters! However, it also points to the difficulties in restoring ecosystems once they have disappeared:
“Just as corals protect tropical islands, these oyster beds created undulation and contour on the harbor bottom that broke up wave action before it could pound the shore with its full force.”
“Will all of these attempts to get oysters back in New York City have any effect in defending us against Sandy? Surely not. The oyster kingdom is gone..
..But what is fairly certain is that storms like Sandy are going to grow stronger and more frequent, and our shorelines will become more vulnerable. For the present storm, all we could do was stock up on canned goods and fill up our bathtubs. But for the storms to come, we’d better start planting a lot more oysters.”
For more, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/opinion/an-oyster-in-the-storm.html
Thank you, Beagling! It’s time for us all to face reality, although I’m not sure I’d say that if I still had a toehold on Fire Is. I jut don’t think we can turn all our shorelines into Holland — or floating kingdoms.
I didn’t know this about oyster beds! How cool.
You can accomplish a lot harnessing nature. In Minneapolis, residents were fed up with Canada geese in Loring Park. What did the park people do? They planted lovely marsh grasses all around Loring Pond. Turns out geese hate walking on those prickly things!
Mangroves are wonderful plants–I remember seeing a video showing how they spread and grow. I’d love to go exploring through a mangrove swamp one day.
Nature *does* have wonderful self-regulatory systems; the reason people try to subvert them is they want something more or faster than nature provides it.