Restoring Teenama's mangroves, Rivers Nigeria

Our current project is in Teenama Community, it lies between Kpean and kwawa Communities in the Yorla Oil Fields of Ogoni, Rivers State, Nigeria.

Living condition of the people is bad, as their major source of livelihood is what has been impacted. We intend to restore lost mangroves and also manage the site. We have restored 21,000 mangroves already women with the community members with defined roles but our target is to 5 million Mangroves as our contribution to the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and to further address the community’s needs in this regards.

We work with a network of environmentally impacted (by Nipa Palm and Crude oil spiils) rural women farmers, fisher folks and pickers of crustaceans from Ogoni coastal communities to carry out these resilient initiatives across degraded mangrove swamp forests with the aim to 1: Fast track ecosystem service recovery. 2: Restore lost biodiversity in order to restore livelihoods, reduce poverty and associated health challenges. 3: Reduce erosion caused by Nipa palm’s shallow roots, and 4: To improve the quality of surrounding air, surface and underground water sources.

Teenama has a land area that is over 500,000 hectares of swamp Forest alone. The project will directly benefit 8 communities with an estimated population size of 29,000 inhabitants and would indirectly benefit over 2,000,000 people (including fisher folks, pickers of crustaceans, small scale traders and the consumer population).

Our greatest challenge has been financial and human resources for a fast track and sustainable time bound implementation. If granted the award, the funds would be channeled towards the purchase of the following: scientific equipment (such as GPS, Getac Camera and a GPS Drone for effective data capturing), purchase 8 Tree Cutting machines to ease labour work during the clearing of Nipa Palm and other alien tree species, provide proper PPE for the implementing team ( like Therm safe PVC Chest Wader Swamp Rain boot, and safety life jackets). It will also support for canoe hire to search for mangrove propagules and transportation cost from the river bank to upland using motor bykes due to the topography of the swamp forest areas.

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