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Palakuda Lagoon Fishermen are working together and with government replanting mangroves as part of the long journey to eventually rebuilding their local eco-systems and livelihoods.

UG. Nagaraja, holds a six month old ‘Bruguiera gymnorrhiza’ .

“If we replant the mangroves, we’ll catch more fish” said Raju Gulasingham. When asked how that was so? Patiently he explained, “mangroves, by growing in and at the edge of the lagoon, provide both somewhere for young fish, prawns and crabs to hide (from predators) and food, in the form of leaves that fall into the water and decompose”.

To prove the point Mr. Gulasingham explained that when 90% of the mangroves fringing Palakuda Lagoon were cleared in the mid 1980’s – to increase local security – the impact was immediately felt by fishermen in the years that followed. The amount of fish, crabs and prawns caught from the lagoon steadily declined, reducing the average income of lagoon fishermen to its current level of less than Rs 150 per day.

This mangroves (Tamil – kanna / Sinhala - kadol) discussion occured during the proceedings of Palakuda Fishermen’s Cooperative Society’s inaugural Mangrove Replanting Day, held in Vinayapuram (Thirukovil DS Division, Ampara District) in May 2004. Mr. Gulasingham is the society’s Mangrove Nursery Manager; he was personally responsible for overseeing the collection, propagation and replanting of over 10,000 mangrove seedlings in 2003/2004.

In collaboration with Fishermen’s Cooperative Society’s in Vinayapuram and in Umithi (who each have their own mangrove nursery and Nursery Manager), over 25,000 mangroves seedlings, comprising five different species, will have been planted by lagoon fishermen in Palakuda Lagoon by the end of May 2004.

The reforestation of the mangrove forest in Palakuda Lagoon is part of a natural resource co-management and community development project that is currently being implemented by Sewalanka Foundation Ampara with financial assistance from the UNDP Global Environment Fund (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP).
In addition to providing technical and financial support to three Fishermen’s Cooperative Societies to establish community-based mangrove nurseries, the project has also worked to strengthen the institutional capacity and management capability of the three societies, culminating in the delivery of a revolving credit fund, worth Rs 100,000, to each society.

Nursery managers Selvaraja, Vinayapuram FCS, and Gulasingham, Palakudah FCS, with some of the 15,000 mangrove seedlings that they have collected and nurtured this year.

The project is novel in many ways, not least by being perhaps the first example of a community managed nursery for mangrove seedlings in Sri Lanka: the nursery managers’ salaries are paid by each society, from the interest (2% per month) re-paid by fishermen receiving loans from their society.

Working with existing government CBOs representing the local fishing community, instead of establishing its own ‘Sewa Society’, was another innovation initiated by the project. This has resulted in Sewalanka field staff working.

closely with government extension staff from the Department of Fisheries and the Cooperative Department, to the mutual benefit of them, the fishermen and Sewalanka.

The coordination that resulted from this approach enabled the project to establish a Co-management Committee at the DS Office. The Co-management Committee, which meets every two months to discuss issues affecting the lagoon and its natural resources, is presided over by the respective Grama Sevakas and comprises representatives from the three societies, the DS Office and the Departments of Fisheries, Forestry and Wildlife, the Environmental Authority and Sewalanka. The meetings act as a forum for defusing local issues (i.e. the use of illegal fishing gear) and to plan initiatives such as the Mangrove Replanting Day.

Although the project’s funding is now coming to an end, the fishermen are confident that they will continue to collect and replant mangrove seedlings beyond the project time-frame, financed by their revolving credit fund and supported by Sewalanka Foundation Ampara.

As fishermen from the society emerged laughing from the mangrove nursery clutching six month old Poo kanna seedlings (Sinhala - Mal kadol / Latin – Bruguieria gymnorrhiza), Mr. Gulasingham pointed out to me the 4 cm high seedlings of Aegiceras corniculatum (Vethala kanna / Heen kadol), each with only two small leaves, that he had collected in March and which will be ready for planting before the northeast monsoon later this year.

It will take perhaps five years before the mangrove seedlings planted this year begin to make a real contribution to increasing fish production and thereby increasing the income of fishermen in the lagoon. The fishermen’s enthusiasm for the project, typified by Mr. Raju Gulasingham, is evidence of a growing sense of social and economic possibility that can be found now all along the eastern coast of Ampara District.

>> For further information please contact:
Mr Deepal Chandrathilake, District Director Ampara or Steve Creech