To protect mangroves, some Kenyans fight logging from secret beehives: NPR

MOMBASA, Kenya – Wearing protective clothing and armed with a smoker, Peter Nyongesa walked through mangroves to visit his beehives along the Indian Ocean coastline.

Nyongesa, 69, recalled how he would unsuccessfully plead with loggers to alternate the mangroves or cut down a generation of mature ones and leave the young ones intact.

He said, “But they will answer that the trees belong to no one but God.”

So he has been able to camouflage and sting within the mangroves, deterring loggerheads with bees.

Their hives now line a stretch of the coastline of Kenya’s major port city of Mombasa, in an effort to discourage people who cut down mangroves for firewood or home construction. It is a part of an area conservation initiative.

“When people know that something is beneficial to them, they don’t think about the harm it causes,” Nyongesa said, referring to the logger.

Mangroves, which thrive in salty water, help fight erosion and absorb the impact of severe climate events such as cyclones.

However, more than half of the region’s mangrove ecosystems are likely to be vulnerable, according to a preliminary world mangrove assessment for the Global Union for Conservation of Nature’s Crimson Ecosystem Red List, released in May.

Mangroves are threatened by illegal logging, exchange of orders and rising seas, air pollution and concrete construction. According to a Kenya Ministry of State report in 2018, about 40% of the mangroves along the Indian Ocean coast have been destroyed.

In Mombasa County, it is estimated that about 50% of the entire mangrove forest there – 1,850 hectares (4,570 acres) – has been destroyed.

Such general disrespect has been slow in Kenya, which in 2017 developed a 10-year plan to lead the society’s mangrove conservation efforts. However the efforts were incomplete as a result of insufficient assets.

Communities are doing what they can. James Carrow, a research scientist at the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, said projects like beekeeping were helping. Their honey also brings a source of income to the society.

“Mangrove honey is also classified as high quality and medicinal,” he said. “This may be due to the environment in which mangroves thrive” and what they take in from their surroundings.

Nyongesa now has 11 beehives and harvests about 8 liters (2 gallons) of honey from each hive every three months. Each liter earns him $6, which is an important source of revenue.

Participants of Tulinde Mikoko, Swahili for “Let’s Protect Mangroves”, plant mangrove wood in Mombasa County, Kenya, May 30, 2024. Mobs have blurred bee hives at the edge of the mangroves and take advantage of the bees’ herbal deterrents, which are strategically located. The hives still serve as protectors of the mangroves, obliterating unsuspecting loggers who struggle to cut down the wood. Let’s attack.

Gideon Maundu/AP

pseudo title

toggle caption

Gideon Maundu/AP

When Nyongesa started beekeeping 25 years ago, she didn’t know anything about threats to mangroves or how her bees could help.

He became curious about 2019, when he joined a regional conservation group called Tulinde Mikoko, Swahili for Let’s Offer Protection to Mangroves. The crowd followed his beekeeping as a social initiative in favor of mangrove planting. Participants additionally lend a hand as protectors of mangroves and attempt to outlaw loggers.

Mobs still have misty beehives as guardians within the managed branches of the mangroves. It is believed that the bees attack the woodcutter without thinking.

“We have placed them at the top where they cannot be easily seen,” said Bibiana Nanjilula, founder of Tulinde Mikoko. “For example, when loggers start cutting any tree, the bees attack because of the noise.”

The crowd is hopeful the strategy is working, but finding access to the gardens to bask in the sun is finding it difficult to measure its results.

Bees also play an important role as pollinators. As they forage on certain mangrove plants, they transfer pollen from one flower to another, making it easier for the vegetation to replant.

“The healthier the mangroves, the more productive honey production will be,” said Jared Bossire, project supervisor for the UNEP-Nairobi conference. He said they inspire a combination of livelihood with conservation. The office is a project of the United Kingdom State Programme, based entirely in Nairobi.

According to a record by the International Mangrove Alliance in 2022, Kenya has more than 54,430 hectares (134,500 acres) of mangroves, and they contribute $85 million per year to the national economy.