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Travel|Watery, Peaceful, Wild: The Call of the Mangroves
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/travel/curacao-mangrove-tourism.html
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It was a sunny day successful February astatine the tallness of the precocious play connected the Caribbean land of Curaçao, but my partner, Aaren, and I were acold from lounging connected a white-sand beach, snorkeling implicit a coral reef oregon strolling among the Easter-egg-colored buildings of Willemstad, Curaçao’s superior and a UNESCO World Heritage site — emblematic activities for travelers to this erstwhile Dutch colony.
Instead, connected a kayak circuit with Serlon St Jago, a usher from the Curaçao Rif Mangrove Park, we were learning astir the country’s mangrove restoration, and the captious relation mangrove habitats play successful coastal resilience, extortion for marine and vertebrate species, and warring the effects of clime change.
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No poisonous snakes, alligators oregon ample predators unrecorded connected Curaçao, Mr. St Jago said, reassuring accusation arsenic we paddled toward a forbidding partition of mangroves lining Piscadera Bay. Up close, the trees were magnificent and cheerful. Colorful birds roosted connected tangled branches and trunks, and tiny paths nether the greenish and occasionally yellowish leaves beckoned america to explore. With our kayaks beached, Mr. St Jago pointed retired fiddler crabs and mussels, and described differences of the section mangrove taxon — the red, achromatic and black — and however they adapted to unrecorded and propagate wherever h2o meets land.
“There’s truthful overmuch beingness here,” helium said with infectious enthusiasm.
We were the lone tourists connected the water, but getting much visitors similar america funny successful mangroves, possibly adjacent persuading them to replant immoderate of the captious trees themselves, has been a precedence of scientists, activists, parkland rangers and tourism operators connected Curaçao successful caller years.
The land isn’t unsocial successful its efforts: Similar mangrove-focused enactment has started astir the world, successful places similar Indonesia, Australia, Belize and Florida, arsenic fragile destinations equilibrium tourism’s maturation with the conservation — and restoration — of the earthy resources that captivate visitors.
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