Malaysia's misunderstood mangroves

New Straits Times 26 Sep 10;

Mangroves are dank, dark and eerie, places we might imagine foul creatures call home. They are neither interesting nor glamorous for most people but they are important. We cannot afford to lose them, writes CHAI MEI LING.

WHY are mangroves so important? What's so appealing about a place with roots jutting out from the mud? Mangroves are dark and eerie, places where creatures like the Swamp Thing, if it existed, would feel at home in.

Not many know, however, that from mangroves we get more than RM5.5 billion worth of services and products -- delicious seafood, potable water and clean air, among others. And that's from along the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia alone, a study has revealed.

If the ecosystem were an employee, we would have to pay it a handsome sum of RM40,000 per hectare a year.

For the longest time, mangroves have been "one of the most unlikeable if not misunderstood places on Earth", says mangrove expert Professor Dr Chong Ving Ching.

He says few can walk there without sinking deep into foul smelling mud or be beset by insects.

"It's perhaps for this reason that one-third of the world's mangrove forests have been lost to development over the past 50 years. Yet mangroves provide for us in so many ways."

Chong was speaking at a lecture in Universiti Malaya recently.

Interestingly, some of the most prominent roles of mangroves are not visible -- nurturing fishery, storing carbon and protecting the west coast from erosion.

This "invisible work" is worth nothing less than RM2.2 billion -- almost 10 times the value of mangroves' direct roles in the tourism, seafood and charcoal trade.

The 2004 tsunami helped spark appreciation for mangroves as coasts naked of mangroves were ravaged.

Since then, researchers, policymakers, green groups, coastal folk, fishermen, students and members of the public have taken part in mangrove rehabilitation exercises to increase their cover.

Mangrove wetlands occupy 567,000ha in Malaysia, comprising some three per cent of the world's mangroves of 18 million hectares.

Chong says the role of mangroves in fisheries is the most economically important one. Fish, prawn and mud crab harvests from its habitat along the west coast are worth some RM30 million.

The ecosystem's nursery role for inshore and offshore fish and prawns is valued at another RM1 billion, hence the linkages between mangroves and fish production are "real and strong".

Studies of the Matang mangroves in Perak and Klang mangroves in Selangor indicate that between 50 and 70 per cent of fish and more than 95 per cent of prawns caught depend on the mangroves to get them through their juvenile stages.

Many are commercially important, like the sea perch (siakap), banana prawn (udang putih) and mud crab (ketam batu).

Mangroves do not just feed young marine life, but also act as shelter, its gnarly roots home to prawns.

In a study three years ago, Chong found that the prawns penetrated as far as 56m inside the mangrove forest of Matang during high tide.

Scientists believe that Malaysia is "the centre of origin of mangrove evolution and dispersal", says Chong.

"The origin of the word 'mangrove' is also Malaysian, its root word is manggi-manggi. Mangroves, therefore, have a special meaning to us."

Fast vanishing

WHEN the mangroves go, so, too, will our fishes.

In a study this year which documented threats to Malaysian fishes, Prof Dr Chong Ving Ching and colleagues found habitat loss accounted for three-quarters of our dwindling stock. Other causes, such as over-harvesting, by-catch, pollution and human disturbance, did not come close to the danger posed by habitat degradation.

The country has some 567,000ha of mangroves. Sabah tops the list, followed by Sarawak, Perak and Johor.

Of the total cover, 23 per cent or 130,000ha are on state land. Some three-quarters of Sarawak’s mangroves are on state land.

As states are not legally bound to preserve tracts of this ecosystem, the mangroves are especially vulnerable to development.

They can be wiped out “with just a stroke of the pen”, says Chong.

Kelantan and Perlis have very little mangrove, with a cover of 744ha and 13ha respectively, but neither has been gazetted as a forest reserve.

Gazetting serves as a form of protection, although not permanent.

The country lost 69,000ha, or 14 per cent of its mangrove forest reserve, between 1980 and 2004.

During that period, Negri Sembilan degazetted 85 per cent of its forest reserve, Terengganu, 57 per cent, and Selangor 47 per cent.

Penang and Johor lost a third of theirs, and Sarawak one-fifth.