Madagascar is more than just an island from an animated movie. It’s a nation with over 200,000 species of plants and animals that don’t exist anywhere else in the world. But more than 90% of Madagascar’s original forests have been destroyed, displacing entire animal species and taking away the Malagasy’s ability to farm and live on the land. Entire mangrove estuaries are gone, leaving the bare earth to wash away into the sea.
Mangroves are critical to coastal health, stabilizing shorelines with their dense root systems that reduce erosion and buffer communities from storm surge and flooding. They also filter pollutants, trap sediment, and create rich nursery habitats
Mangroves support biodiversity by creating complex root systems that provide shelter, breeding grounds, and nursery habitat for fish, crustaceans, birds, and countless marine species. Their unique transition zone between land and sea sustains a wide range of organisms, forming one of the most biologically productive and diverse ecosystems on the planet.
Mangroves are powerful carbon sinks, capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in their dense biomass and deep, waterlogged soils. Because their roots trap organic matter in low-oxygen conditions where it decomposes slowly, mangrove ecosystems can store significantly more carbon per acre than most terrestrial forests.
