By Joella Korczak, Seawater Solutions Chief Strategy Officer
Last week, we arranged a community mangrove planting day in one of our project areas, in the village of Fiaxor in Ghana’s Keta lagoon area. We collected our seedlings from our partner, the Anloga division of the Forestry Commission, and transported them to Fiaxor the night before we started our planting day, ready to go early the next morning.
With the positive spirit and help of the local community of Fiaxor, we had a great planting experience and the success of planting 10,000 mangroves with 55 community members, mainly women. Planting together with community members is one way to include the locals in the restoration of mangrove ecosystems, and also to create responsibility for these trees.
We had the perfect weather conditions: it was a cloudy day, and even though the sun was shining strongly in-between, no one stopped planting. We are currently in the minor rainy season in southern Ghana, which seems to be this year even stronger than the major rainy season. For our planting activities, this is the perfect time to plant. Since our own nursery has many mangroves which are waiting to be planted, soon we will have another big planting day, which I am very excited about!
Plant more trees!