Flood

28

December 2017

F rom Kristie Caistor’s scrapbook:

The director of Mississippi’s marine resources department lamented the failure of his scheme to cultivate mangroves in coastal areas of the state rendered uninhabitable by the flooding.

“It looked like the perfect way to make a constructive use of the abandoned land. Mangroves are kind of botanical amphibians. They can tolerate salt water, to a degree. They’re natural breakwaters that stabilize the land against erosion and flooding. They are a source of lumber, and pharmaceuticals. And they are refuges for wildlife-birds in the canopy, shellfish attached to the roots, alligators hunting at the water surface. They’re even terrific carbon sequestrators.

“But the sea is rising just too fast. Our mangroves are being drowned before they can grow, or do any good.

“We haven’t given up, we’re falling back is all, replanting further inland. I can assure the public that Mississippi’s mangrove dream is alive.”