Village Project - Mangrove Planting!

On Friday, GVI's TEFL volunteers, interns and staff joined Ao Luk's Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR), primary school children from Klong Rat School and Tham Suea School, as well as local officials and the local community to plant 800 mangrove trees at Bor Thor, a village famous for kayaking through mangrove swamps and caves with ancient cave paintings.

Mangroves are an important wetland habitat found in coastal areas. They create a buffer zone protecting the land from waves, winds and storms. They serve as home to a number of creatures both aquatic and terrestrial. And they absorb an enormous amount of carbon gases from the air helping to combat global warming.

In Thailand, as in many other tropical, coastal countries, people have destroyed valuable wetlands areas to make room for development and shrimp farms and use the wood for cooking or making charcoal. Queen Sirikit of Thailand has organized a project to replant the countries mangrove forests the the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources. The Ao Luk DMCR is scheduled to plant 700,000 mangrove trees before the Queen's birthday in August 2011.

All together nearly 100 people came out to help with the planting. GVI Thailand's Regional Director, Jill, joined the DMCR to teach primary school students about the importance of mangroves, about the creatures that live in the mangrove habitat and the reasons for planting the mangroves before the planting event started. With so many hands the planting was complete in less than hour.

Degraded wetland where mangroves were replanted

Mayor Prasit spoke to everyone about the importance of protecting Ao Luk's mangrove forests

Students from local primary schools came out to help.

Everyone helped to plant 800 mangrove trees

And everyone got kind of muddy

Village Project - Mangrove Planting!