By Gerry T. Estrera
By halting deforestation, the country can save its endangered coral reefs.
Such was the suggestion of Dr. Joseph Maina of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, who led a study which carried out a computer simulation of four river systems in Madagascar whose outflows have an impact on local coral ecosystems.
By 2090, global warming will have a big effect on these watersheds, reducing rainfall and as a result diminishing the deposit of sediment into the sea, the team found out. “However, these climate change-driven declines are outweighed by the impact of deforestation,” they said.
The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) agrees. “When loggers, kaingineros, firewood gatherers and charcoal makers cut down trees and burn underbrush, they leave the soil of the mountainsides bare and defenseless against strong wind and rain,” explains BFAR.
“During rains, runoff carries eroded soil down to the rivers that deposit it in the sea. This siltation smothers reefs and kills or drives away to inhospitable areas the fishes that feed and shelter among corals,” adds BFAR, a line agency of the Department of Agriculture.
According to Dr. Maina, sediment washed downriver by tree-depleted land can cripple near-shore corals, as it clouds the water and diminishes the light on which coral communities depend.
In the 1950s, only three-fourths of the archipelago was covered with forest, according to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). By 1972, the figure had shrunk to half and by 1988 only quarter was wooded and just one tiny fraction of this was virgin forest.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said about 7,665,000 hectares of the country is forested. Between 1990 and 2010, the country lost an average of 54,750 hectares per year.
In the last ten years, blast fishing and other destructive practices have gone down by half in the country, good news for the degraded coral reefs. But sedimentation as a result soil erosion brought about by deforestation smothers them.
This must be the reason why the percentage of coral reefs deemed to be in “poor” condition rose from 33 per cent in the 1980s to 40 per cent in the most recent estimates, according to Dr. Theresa Mundita Lim, director of the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau.
Coral reefs that are in ‘excellent’ condition was also further reduced to one per cent from the already dismal statistics of five per cent in the 1980s.
“The Philippines has 22,500 square kilometers of coral reef area, which represents 9 percent of the global total, making it the country with the third-largest reef area in the world (after Australia and Indonesia),” notes Reefs at Risk Revisited in the Coral Triangle, which was released during the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium in Cairns, Australia last year.
“All major reef types are present in the Philippines; most are fringing reefs along the coastlines, as well as some area of barrier, atoll, and patch reefs,” says the Washington-based World Resources Institute. In addition, the country is home to 464 species of hard corals.
Coral reefs are considered underwater forests because of their complex ecosystem that supports a huge amount of wildlife. They serve as shelter to fishes and other marine creatures like molluscs, crustaceans, sea urchins, starfish, sponges, and tube-worms, to name a few. A single reef can support as many as 3,000 species of marine life.
As fishing grounds, they are thought to be 10 to 100 times as productive per unit are as the open sea. In the Philippines, the reefs reportedly yield 5 to 37 tons of fish per square kilometer, thus making them very important to the productivity of fisheries.
Dynamic and highly productive, coral reefs are not only a critical habitat for numerous species, but also provide essential ecosystem services upon which millions of people depend.
In the Philippines, the seas supply more than 80% of the animal protein of the Filipino public, said Environment Secretary Ramon Paje. More than 60% of the country’s 96 million population live on the coast within 30 kilometers of coral reefs.
The destruction of coral reefs has dramatically declined fish catch in the country. “We admit that there has been a decline in our local fisheries because of destructive fishing methods and over fishing,” said BFAR Director Asis Perez.
For centuries, coastal communities have used reef plants and animals for their medicinal properties. In the Philippines, for instance, giant clams are eaten as a malaria treatment.
“Many coral reef species produce chemicals like histamines and antibiotics used in medicine and science,” reports The Nature Conservancy, an organization whose mission is to preserve plants, animals and natural communities by protecting the lands and waters needed for their survival.
“Unique medicinal properties of coral reef organisms were recognized by Eastern cultures as early as the 14th century, and some species continue to be in high demand for traditional medicines,” observes Dr. Andrew Bruckner, a coral reef ecologist in the US National Marine Fisheries Service’s Office of Protected Resources in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Despite their importance, coral reefs are facing extinction in the country. “Nowhere else in the world are coral reefs abused as much as the reefs in the Philippines,” commented marine scientist Don E. McAllister, who once studied the cost of coral reef destruction in the country.
“Our coasts and seas have suffered heavy degradation wrought by over half a century of destructive practices,” pointed out Dr. Lim.
Recent studies show that overfishing remained the major threat to coral reefs in the Philippines, but pollution from various sources is also growing at an alarming rate.
“These include inappropriate land use practices, irresponsible mining practices, deforestation or illegal logging activities, improper waste disposal, etc. There was also considerable growth in coastal development manifested by the increase in coastal populations, built-up areas, and urbanization,” reported Dr. Lim.
So, how can coral reefs be saved from completely vanishing in Philippine waters? “The only way to save coral reefs from extinction and restore their productivity is to limit access to them,” suggests Dr. Edgardo D. Gomez, a world-renowned marine scientist who has published extensively on coral reef resource management and ecology. “This is no mean task, but it seems it is the only means we can save our coral reefs from disappearing in this part of the world.”
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