Today, we had a meeting with Patricia from the Nursery which grows various types of tropical plants for restoration. She was wildly impressed with our close tracking and observation of the 30 Day Field Study we created. Patricia gave us the name of a man, Pedro Martinez, who is a biologist working specifically with mangroves under her supervision. We plan to set up a time with him where we could map our site's topography, location and distance with GIS and GPS. She also suggested that we do thorough research on the identification of wildlife that we see in and around the mangroves, including vegetation, fish and other animals.
We conversed about the land ownership of the beaches, as in the Dominican Republic, beaches are not privately owned. However, she explained it would be useless to go through all the trouble to plant in front of properties that owners did not want the trees or did not understand the importance of the restoration because they would not respect the project and potentially undo all of our work. We hope that through connecting with the Ministry of the Environment our project will hold more weight in explaining the importance of the restoration. Another important factor she proposed that we had not yet considered, is artificial protection. This would mean physically moving rocks or coral to create barriers or even using a fenced in structure. We need to do more research on which of these potential barriers would be best suited for our specific sites.
Overall, the meeting with Patricia went well and she gave us positive feedback to continue our project. She also offered mangrove seedlings to us which we anticipate using for education purposes when we involve schools in the planting process.
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