I spent a lot of time this season figuring out how I was going to make an episode about mangroves.
Evan, I said to myself, you're going to be in Micronesia, you have to make a video about mangroves.
Just didn't really know what that was going to be. But I really really wanted to.
Because back in university, I helped my then girlfriend edit an essay that she'd written about,
you guessed it, mangroves.
And I don’t really remember exactly what it says, but I do remember the general vibe of it.
Which was, this is the most important tree in the ocean.
So what’s so good about mangroves, you might ask? Well, great question. Thank you for your interest.
The answer is pretty much everything. Mangroves are like a super tree.
They stop erosion by keeping the shoreline together and serve as a natural breakwall for the waves.
They provide a safe place for fish to hide, and therefore reproduce, and therefore grow.
They provide a lifeline to birds, lizards, crabs, and all sorts of other important animals, even bats.
They even cool the water. Which doesn’t sound like much but you try being a fish in boiling water.
And there’s nowhere on earth that has as healthy mangroves as here in Micronesia,
specifically in the states of Kosrae and Pohnpei.
But the thing is, I’m not just here to tell you about how great this tree is. Since when does Rare Earth just provide information?
No, the way that I'm going to talk about this plant is to use it as a symbol to discuss the pitfalls of conservation.
Because while I was in Kosrae’s famed Nautilus resort, eating my dinner and demanding strangers talk to me,
I came across two men who would not let me film them. Which was smart of them,
because chances are I was probably going to embarrass them on camera
and I can’t imagine that would have been great for their careers.
Plus, they were really nice guys who I enjoyed the company of, and very much so open to hearing the words of this story, so I would have felt terrible doing that.
But I did film a little bit of their equipment. Because I needed something.
I’ve got to talk about them somehow, they’re kind of crucial to this story.
Because they’re conservation officers, and they’re here in Kosrae to study the mangroves.
More specifically, their organization has set up conservation zones that they’re using to determine
if the mangroves are going to be able to withstand the effects of climate change.
A very noble cause, a cause I absolutely support.
Which, according to the data they’ve collected so far, it probably will.
Not that I ever doubted you, you beautiful tree, but it’s still nice to have the data.
And according to that preliminary research, they say that it's probably going to survive the next hundred years of change.
Which is better than anybody expected.
However, climate change might not be the mangrove's biggest threat here. Their biggest threat might be, well, these guys.
Because if you talk to the locals, they’re quite concerned that the forest will be long gone well before those hundred years are up.
Not because of rising sea levels, per se, but because of the conservation zones.
You see, the good people of Kosrae, for whatever reason, have always cut the mangrove for their firewood.
There’s plenty of trees in the jungle, trees that would more than sustainably grow back,
but for whatever reason, people here like the mangrove.
They say it burns slower, that it doesn’t produce much ash or smoke.
And what’s more, they've just always done it. It’s their culture.
But whatever their reason, all that’s really important to me is that they do it.
They’re not the type of people who change their firewood all that easily. And I don't expect it's going to change anytime soon.
They’re going to keep cutting this mangrove.
And although the population here is shrinking, and the demand for firewood is lower than basically any point in living memory,
they’re starting to see a decline in their forests. Or, at least, so people claim.
According to those local people, ever since these conservation officers have showed up, ever since they were pushed away from certain regions,
they’ve been forced to collect their firewood from smaller patches of forest.
So what was once a harvest split across an entire island is now being collected in small pockets.
And in turn, those pockets are being destroyed in a way that never happened before.
And as those pockets are wiped away, so too is the land behind them. Because mangroves protect this shore.
And as that shore erodes, it becomes harder for the remaining mangroves to survive.
But since conservation officers only really study their areas of conservation,
from the standpoint of science these forests have never been stronger. They’re growing.
They’re going to survive the next hundred years of climate change.
And since researchers aren’t given time in their schedule to sit down and drink with locals
and locals don’t do much hard scientific research, there’s never really been anybody to be able to cross the information between the two.
Until, that is, me. Yeah that’s right. Tootin’ my own horn.
Because sitting down with those researchers I proposed this problem,
and less so as a means of helping them and more to understand if it was a story worth telling to you, granted.
But their response was that they’d never really thought of it that way. And now that they’d heard it, they were going to incorporate it into their research.
Now that they knew what the locals were thinking, how their actions were affecting the local environment,
or at least being perceived as affecting the local environment,
they could better suit their actions to fit the reality of this island's life.
And I thought this was really noble of them. These were sweet dudes.
They truly did seem like they were trying to do the right thing.
They just weren’t their own bosses, they worked for the government,
and they didn’t have any time put into their work schedules to drink with random strangers like I did.
To hear the locals complain about what foreigners do.
I do not believe Kosraeans are some noble savage with ancient indigenous wisdom on how to best protect their forest.
They’re just human as the rest of us.
Poverty and low education tends to breed bad behaviour no matter where you are.
But I do believe them when they say that they’ve never seen the mangrove cut like it is now.
That they’ve never felt afraid of it being destroyed like they are right now.
And hey, maybe they’re wrong. I hope they are, in fact.
Maybe they’re just being xenophobic to a couple of white boys in weird outfits getting trapped out in the surf.
But those officers immediately agreed that regardless of the truth, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hear them out and check.
Because science is bettered when we include all the variables.
And no matter the level of education of those involved, any truly effective conservation requires everyone.
This is the mangrove, the most important tree in the ocean. And if you ask me, it's worthy of an essay.
This is Rare Earth.