Important Considerations to Achieve Successful Mangrove Forest Restoration with Optimum Fish Habitat

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This article discusses how fish and mangrove ecosystems in Florida, USA, are coupled in time and space, offers several strategies for mangrove restoration with the goal to improve fish habitat, and provides a simple sequential checklist of design tasks.

Conclusions & Takeaways

The authors review several articles that discuss the value of mangroves as habitat for fish and invertebrates, the effects of habitat protection, the life histories and eco-physiological capabilities of fish, and the effects of altering habitat through impounding, degradation, or fragmentation. They suggest three restoration strategies for fish habitat optimization: (1) achieve plant cover similar to that in an adjacent relatively undisturbed and mature mangrove ecosystem; (2) establish a network of channels that mimics the shape and form of a nat­ural tidal creek system; and (3) establish a heterogeneous landscape similar to that exhibited by the lo­cal mangrove ecosystem. They review likely sources of failure and outline five sequential design tasks to minimize or prevent them: (1) understand the autecology of the relevant species; (2) understand normal hydrologic patterns; (3) determine what modifications and stresses are preventing natural secondary succession; (4) reestablish the appropriate hydrology and then utilize natural mangrove recruitment; and (5) plant propagules or seedlings if natural recruitment is met with failure.