Mangrove Restoration
Challenge
The most common mangrove restoration method is the planting of mangrove saplings which is slow, costly and has limited success. Saplings take around 9-12 months to produce with a commercial cost of around $10 per sapling. Unfortunately the success rate of planted saplings growing to a mature tree is only around 10%.
Solution
2 volunteers can install over 300 square meters of our device per day.
A team of 12 volunteers can install over 1.5 square kilometres in only 1 week.
The cost of our device is currently $9 per device. Our success rate is a mature tree per 1.5 square meters at a cost of $36 per square meter.
Mangrove Mate is 100% biodegradable and only costs $9+gst per device.
Why it works
Each river system has its own unique makeup of mangrove species. It is difficult to commercialise seedling production to match each system, so more times than not, mangrove restoration projects fail due to a mismatch of species for a particular system.
Our device captures the seeds that naturally occur within that river system. They then only germinate in the areas along the bank where they normally would within that system. The prefect situation of the same seeds naturally germinating in the same soil/sand composition at the right time of the year.
Set and forget. During the life of the device, it will capture around 3-4 seasons worth of seeds before it has biodegraded away. It can be rapidly installed at any time of the year and requires no maintenance
Our initial test site is 15m long. After 4 years there are around 70 mangroves with some 1.5m high. No seeds were planted in the area. All mangroves have grown from seeds that the Mangrove Mate captured floating up and down the river,