#10Guardians; Meet Sophia, the Mangrove Guardian

For communities in the coastal region of Kenya, fishing is the main source of income. Mangrove forests provide critical habitats for the marine life that supports this economy, and they also filter pollutants, stabilising the coastline ecosystem, and preventing erosion.

Across the globe, thousands of acres of mangroves have been lost to pave way for farming and intense harvesting of timber and charcoal, threatening fishing livelihoods.

Sophia Abdalla, a ranger from Pate Marine Community Conservancy (PMCC) - an NRT member conservancy in Lamu on Kenya’s north coast - relates with this reality very well. She grew up watching how logging of mangrove trees over years was slowly damaging her household income, Sophia - who now works as a ranger radio operator - now hopes to conserve mangroves to support the coastal communities. 

Besides helping to protect mangroves from loggers, Sophia usually joins her team of 12 rangers to raise awareness in her community on the need to sustain mangrove forests within the conservancy to improve livelihoods.

Extensive logging and over-harvesting of mangrove for fuel wood and timber production has left part of the shoreline of Pate Island degraded and unstable.

Lamu remains the most heavily forested stretch of coast, but sadly nearly 40% of mangrove areas are now degraded.

That is why local communities - led by women - are leading mangrove restoration campaigns to restore and conserve Mikoko (mangrove in Swahili) in and around Pate, since these trees play a keystone role for the coastal ecosystem such as providing breeding grounds for fish and protecting the shoreline.

“By educating our communities on the importance of mangrove, they help restore, conserve and protect them,” says Sophia.

Twice every week, Sophia and her colleagues conduct mangrove monitoring, and help women volunteers in removing debris and plant new seedlings in degraded areas in six villages- Mtangawanda, Pate, Faza, Kizingitini, Siyu and Andao.

So far, communities have restored 15 Hectares of forest cover by planting 76,500 mangrove trees in partnership with Kenya Forest Service (KFS), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), Kenya Marine and Fisheries research Institute and the County Government of Lamu with a target to restore 35,000 hectares in five years.

As a result of these efforts, there is reduction in logging, more support from communities and partners in conserving mangrove and increased income.

Since 2019, 49,948 mangrove seedlings were planted at the NRT-Coast, with successful growth rate of 80%.