Mangrove conservation prominent in campaign
World Wildlife Fund (WWF)Pacific in partnership with the Lami Town Council held a mangrove nursery set up, mangrove seedling transplanting and a clean-up campaign within the Lami Town area on Saturday. WWF-Pacific’s global Earth Hour celebration was in line with this year’s theme: Biodiversity. About 200 people attended the event on Saturday morning at Tikaram Park, in Lami, for the clean-up campaign, transplanting mangrove seedlings and a Fiji Navy activity, which involved the setting up of a mangrove nursery.
WWF-Pacific policy co-ordinator and great sea reef programme coordinator Alfred Ralifo said Earth Hour was WWF’s annual event involving the largest global grassroots movement for planet earth. “This year we are celebrating it with our special focus on mangroves and biodiversity,’’ he said.
“Global biodiversity has continuously been on the decline and at the moment, we have lost about 50 per cent of our biodiversity since 1970. “Since it has been continuously declining, this year we wanted to focus on biodiversity with Earth Hour which is an event that normally focus on fighting climate change.” He said the reason for focusing on biodiversity was because of the food and water that we drink and eat, but at the same time, without biodiversity we cannot fight climate change.
“Here in Fiji, there are a lot of ecosystems we can focus on. This year we are focusing on mangroves which are a critical ecosystem for biodiversity. It the only plant that can fight climate change more effectively than any other forests.
“For this year’s activities, we have worked with the Lami Town Council, Ministry of Fisheries, our corporate sector and Pacific Energy.