Help the Environment by volunteering in the Philippines

The province of Romblon in the Philippines has been subject to large scale deforestation.  Many of the mangrove trees have been cut for use either as firewood or to make way for shrimp ponds.  The shrimp ponds provided some short term financial gains for the islanders, but the long term prospects have been disastrous.

The local fish life use the mangrove as both as place to lay their eggs and to provide protection for the young fish.  The fish numbers plummeted once the mangroves were removed.

The mangroves also provide a natural break for tsunamis.  This was made all too painfully clear for the locals when Typhoon Frank visited.  Walking along the beach reveals many flimsy houses behind mangroves that survived Frank and many concrete foundations that were once houses that suffered at the hands of Frank due to lack of mangrove protection

This paper documents the mangrove projects in the Philippines that have failed and should be considered compulsory reading for anyone wishing to be part of Project Mangrove.

Information Management

If you're interested in posing for pictures as you plant mangroves, then we suggest you volunteer with a different organization.  Here is a good one for volunteer tourists.

If - on the other hand - you are interested in having a real and meaningful impact on the environment, then you have come to the right place!

A lot of the work at this stage of the project is documentation and research.  We want to make sure we do it right as so many mangrove projects fail around the world.  We have developed this document management tool to keep track of all the research and documentation that comes in.

Mangrove Species

Click here for detailed information about the mangrove species present in the Philippines.

Interactive Map

We are also developing a detailed map of the coastal areas.  A detailed map is critical to any successful mangrove project.

The map is forever changing as we add new information to it.  Click on the image below to view the current state of the interactive map.