MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Dressed in protective clothing and armed with a smoker, Peter Nyongesa walked through the mangroves to monitor his beehives along the Indian Ocean coastline. The 69-year-old Nyongesa recalled how he would plead unsuccessfully with loggers to spare the mangroves or cut only the mature ones while leaving the younger ones intact. “But they would retort that the trees do not belong to anyone but God,” he said.
So he has turned to deterring the loggers with bees, hidden in the mangroves and ready to sting. Their hives now dot a section of coastline in main port city of Mombasa in an effort to deter people who chop mangroves for firewood or home construction. It’s part of a local conservation initiative.
“When people realize that something is beneficial to them, they do not consider the harm that comes with it,” Nyongesa said of the loggers. Mangroves, which thrive in salty water, help in such as cyclones. But more than half of the world’s mangrove ecosystems are at risk of collapse, according to the for the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Ecosystems released in May.
Mangroves are threatened by illegal logging, and rising seas, pollution and urban development. According to a Kenya environment ministry report in 2018, about 40% of mangroves along the Indian Ocean coast are degraded. In Mombasa county, it’s estimated that almost 50% of the total mangrove area there — 1,850 hectares (4,570 acres) — is degraded.
Such .