MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Dressed in protective gear and holding a smoker, Peter Nyongesa walked through mangroves to monitor honeybee hives along the Indian Ocean coast.
Nyongesa, 69, recalled pleading unsuccessfully with loggers to leave the mangroves alone or to cut down only the mature trees while leaving the young ones alone.
“But they would counter that trees don’t belong to anyone but God,” he said.
So he decided to thwart loggers using honeybees that hide in the mangroves and are ready to sting.
Their nests now dot a stretch of coastline in Kenya’s main port city of Mombasa, part of a local environmental effort to stop people from cutting down mangroves for firewood and housing.
“When people realize something is beneficial to them, they stop thinking about the harm that comes with it,” Nyongesa said of loggers.
Mangroves thrive in saltwater, helping to prevent erosion and absorbing the effects of severe weather events such as cyclones.
But more than half of the world’s mangrove ecosystems are at risk of collapse, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s first-ever Global Mangrove Assessment of Red List Ecosystems, released in May.
Mangroves are threatened by illegal logging, climate change, rising sea levels, pollution and urban development. About 40 percent of mangroves along the Indian Ocean coast are degraded, according to a 2018 report by the Kenyan Ministry of Environment.
In Mombasa County, an estimated 1,850 hectares (4,570 acres) of mangrove forests are degraded, about 50 percent of the total area.
Kenya has slowed overall mangrove degradation and in 2017 launched a 10-year plan to manage mangroves through community conservation, but efforts remain incomplete due to a lack of funding.
Communities are doing what they can, and James Cairo, a research scientist at the Kenya Institute of Marine and Fisheries Research, said initiatives such as beekeeping are helping, with the honey the beekeepers produce also providing an income for the community.
“Mangrove honey is of the highest quality and is also classified as medicinal,” he added. “This may be due to the environment in which mangroves thrive and what they absorb from their surroundings.”
Nyongesa now has 11 hives and harvests about eight liters (two gallons) of honey from each hive every three months, earning him $6 per liter, providing a valuable source of income.
When Nyongesa started beekeeping 25 years ago, he had no idea about the threats to mangroves or how his bees could help.
His involvement began in 2019 when he joined a local conservation group called Turinde Mikoko (Swahili for Save the Mangroves), which has incorporated his beekeeping into its community activities along with mangrove planting, with members also acting as mangrove stewards and trying to thwart loggers.
The group acts as silent guardians, hiding beehives in the upper branches of the mangroves, where the bees are placed to attack unsuspecting loggers.
“We’ve placed the bees on the tops where they’re not easy to find,” says Turinde Mikoko founder Bibiana Nanjila, “so whenever loggers start cutting any tree, the noise will attract the bees.”
The group hopes the tactic will work, but finds it hard to gauge its impact in areas that are harder to access.
Bees also play an important role as pollinators, foraging among mangrove flowers and carrying pollen from flower to flower, helping plants reproduce.
“The healthier the mangroves are, the more honey they will produce,” said Jared Bosire, project manager for the UNEP Nairobi Convention, a Nairobi-based project of the United Nations Environment Programme, which encourages the integration of livelihoods and conservation.
Kenya has 54,430 hectares (134,500 acres) of mangrove forest remaining, generating $85 million in annual economic benefits, according to a 2022 Global Mangrove Alliance report.
___
For more information on Africa and development, visit https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse
___
The Associated Press receives funding for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For AP’s philanthropic collaboration criteria, a list of supporters and areas of coverage funded, visit AP.org.
