In September 2019, Category 5 Hurricane Dorian passed through the northern Bahamas. It was the most intense tropical cyclone to land in The Bahamas and is regarded as the worst natural disaster in the country’s history. The hurricane caused extreme societal and ecological damage, including extensive die-off of “dwarf” red mangroves.

To address the ecological damage, a massive restoration project is underway–one of the largest mangrove restoration projects in the world. A collaboration driven by Bonefish & Trust, the private company MANG, and many other local and international organizations, more than 77,000 seedlings and propagules have been planted to date. Look for our first paper on the project to be published soon.

This builds on past work on mangrove creek restoration on Andros and Abaco Islands (the photo is from a restoration project at Cross Harbour, Abaco). They all involved restoring hydrologic connectivity to creeks previously blocked by roads. Dozens of community members, including many students were involved in each project. Descriptions of some of the projects can be found here and here.

This work is set in the context of habitat fragmentation with example topics including niche with collapse, secondary production, nutrient limitation, population dynamics, and fish assemblage structure.