Kalain Ho­sein

With cor­po­rate T&T’s sup­port, two south Ro­taract Clubs re­moved 130 bags of garbage from the Cipero wet­lands in the first phase of their Man­grove Restora­tion Project over the week­end.

Over 30 vol­un­teers at­tend­ed the two-hour clean-up on Sun­day, in­clud­ing stu­dents from the In­ter­act Club of San Fer­nan­do Cen­tral Sec­ondary School.

“I am re­al­ly pleased with the turnout and all that we achieved in this brief time. For me, this col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween our two clubs, in­ter­ac­tors and dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies has been an enor­mous suc­cess,” Ro­taract Club of San Fer­nan­do-South pres­i­dent Celi­na Baldeo said.

Ro­taract San Fer­nan­do pres­i­dent Jer­diah Boodoo said while he was proud of the fel­low­ship, it was a heart-break­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to see how hu­man ac­tions af­fect­ed na­ture. He urged all to be mind­ful of where their waste goes and not lit­ter.

The cleanup fo­cused on the area nes­tled be­hind Soogrim Trace, Gulf View, where 15 hectares of es­tu­ar­ine man­grove adorn the in­ter­sec­tion of the Cipero Riv­er and Caribbean Sea.

The area al­so pro­vides aes­thet­ic beau­ty to the neigh­bour­hood and en­vi­ron­men­tal ser­vices to the coun­try, such as flood pre­ven­tion, car­bon se­ques­tra­tion and wildlife habi­ta­tion.

How­ev­er, there has been a de­cline in the man­grove’s qual­i­ty and cov­er­age over the years, prompt­ing the Ro­taract Clubs of San Fer­nan­do and San Fer­nan­do-South to act.

REP­SOL spon­sored this ini­tial phase. The garbage, in­clud­ing lit­ter, old tyres and dis­card­ed ap­pli­ances, was moved at no cost by Cen­tral Equip­ment Rentals Lim­it­ed (CERL). Ad­vi­sors Next Door pro­vid­ed tech­ni­cal and pro­mo­tion­al sup­port to the Clubs.

In a me­dia re­lease, As­sis­tant Dis­trict Ro­taract Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Crys­tal Mo­hammed ex­plained, “In 2020, Ro­tary Foun­da­tion Trustees and Ro­tary In­ter­na­tion­al Board of Di­rec­tors added ‘sup­port­ing the en­vi­ron­ment’ as the sev­enth area of fo­cus for all clubs, recog­nis­ing its im­por­tance in cre­at­ing a just, sus­tain­able and healthy fu­ture for all. Al­though the Cipero wet­lands are among the small­est in the coun­try, it is the clos­est to home for these two clubs. We must act lo­cal­ly while think­ing glob­al­ly. We hope to in­crease man­grove num­bers in the area as part of Ro­taract’s fight against cli­mate change. Clean­ing up is just the first step.”

The project in­cludes rou­tine man­grove clean­ing, soil and wa­ter qual­i­ty as­sess­ments to de­ter­mine the cause of man­grove loss­es and seedling trans­plant­i­ng.

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