Mangroves are recognized globally for their impressive carbon storage potential and plethora of social and ecological benefits. Beyond their outsize role in buffering the world against greenhouse gas emissions, their extensive root systems protect and stabilize coastlines and provide habitat for commercially important fish and shellfish. However, these crucial coastal tropical forests also have a long history of exploitation. Mangrove timber has sustained local livelihoods for generations. The need to preserve mangroves and the ecosystem services they sustain, while also providing for the social and economic needs of the people who depend on them, is one of coastal conservation’s greatest conundrums. Now, new research based on long-term data from a mangrove production forest in Malaysia suggests that, in some cases, it is possible to reconcile mangrove protection with resource needs — but only when the correct management is implemented and enforced. Mangrove timber pile at a forest thinning site in Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve in Malaysia. Image courtesy of Behara Satyanarayana. The study, published in Journal for Nature Conservation, evaluated more than a century of 10-year forestry management plans from Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve, one of the world’s longest-managed reserves of its kind, to investigate the drivers behind recent changes in mangrove biomass and productivity. “Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve is a unique case demonstrating that mangrove exploitation does not need to result in degradation, or at least not within a century,” Behara Satyanarayana, an associate professor at the University of Malaysia Terengganu and a co-lead author of the study, told Mongabay.…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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