They call him the mangrove man, which obviously sounds like Superman and suits him pretty well, since what TP Murukesan, a resident of the city of Kochi in southern India, is doing is titanic: he took it into his head to replant the mangrove that had disappeared from his island, Vypin, 27 km long, foot by foot, plant by plant, to prevent the coast from collapsing. He started ten years ago, and he tells the Associated Press how he intends to fight against rising waters and erosion.
Mangroves are those bushes that grow with their feet in the water along the coasts, but which, to have easier access to the sea, or even to build roads, have been uprooted, square meter by square meter. To the point of seriously weakening the earth. More natural dam in case of storm, more plant buffer to absorb the waves. “The floods are getting higher and higherexplains TP Murukesan, but we can fix that, anyway we can try“.
100,000 mangrove seedlings transplanted in ten years
In the backyard of his house, he therefore created a plant nursery, a small space where he cuts mangroves. In bamboo tubes that act as pots, he puts soil and inserts branches, one branch per pot, branch which in contact with the soil will make roots and therefore a new plant. In total, since 2013, with the help of his wife, he has transplanted into the water more than 100,000 all along the coast of the island of Vypin. And it works. The first mangrove he replanted in 2014 is now dense and firmly anchored. A success that earned him an environmental award two years ago, to meet local elected officials and to inspire other similar initiatives.
“It’s good, but we have to go faster, because we are still far from what I knew when I was little“He explains that as a child, he could drink water from the rivers, that the sea, salty, did not rise in it, that no one fell ill. In 50 years, the State of Kerala has lost 98% of its mangroves In other words, replanting everything requires more than just one “mangrove man”, and at the same time, someone has to start.