Sundarbans: World-Class Mangroves!

Sundarbans National Park protects the world's most extensive mangrove forest––3900 square miles of mangroves!––located in the delta of the combined Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers. About a third of the mangroves are in neighboring Bangladesh. Both governments are committed on paper to preserving this important coastal region, but current enforcement of the protections is ineffective.

Mangroves in Sundarbans National Park

"Mangrove" describes overall about 110 different species of shrubs and small trees, which grow in coastal waters, both saline and brackish, in the tropics and subtropics. Generally, different mangrove species have different tolerances of salinity, and are dispersed along a salinity gradient. As seawater rises with climate warming, the salt water advances farther inland along the rivers, favoring some mangrove species over others.

Mangroves are especially good at sequestering carbon dioxide––better than other forest types––and thus they help to buffer climate change. The very fine soil that accumulates around their roots acts as a sink for heavy metals, and so they clean the water and sequester contaminants as well. Oysters thrive on their roots. Mollusks, sponges, shrimp, crabs, and young fish all depend on the shelter that mangroves provide. People, too, depend on the mangroves, not only to support fisheries, but also to protect communities near the coast from the worst ravages of cyclones.

A mudpuppy at the water's edge

Fiddler Crabs, one a male brandishing his great claw

For our visit to Sundarbans with Naturalist Journeys, we were based in Sundarbans Jungle Camp, and explored the region by boat. Each morning began with hot tea, followed by an all-day boat trip in a two-deck boat, with bathroom, kitchen and a rest area below the main viewing deck. Breakfasts and lunches were served on board.

Cabin at Sundarbans Jungle Camp

The view from our boat (which didn't list like the other one!)

Both mornings began with early fog.

Fog in the Sundarbans

Each day we walked along one of the boardwalks suspended above the mangroves, and viewed critters from a tower. The Sundarbans area is famous for its people-eating Tigers, and visitors are well-protected by netting along the walkways. Entire villages are located within the national park, and those, too, are surrounded by high netting in an effort to thwart the Tigers.

Walkway through mangroves, Sundarbans National Park

At one tower, a pair of Brahminy Kites incited bedlam among the Lesser Whistling-Ducks: whenever the kites circled nearby, the ducks would dive, in a striking syncopated water dance.

Brahminy Kites circle over Lesser Whistling-Ducks

Back on the river, a good-sized Saltwater Crocodile lounged in the sun.

Saltwater Crocodile, seeming to nap

Common Water Monitors also sunned on mangrove branches along the waterways.

Common Water Monitor, sunning

On our second morning, we began by carefully searching the banks, and were rewarded when our guides found a beautiful Jungle Cat, resting on the bank with her playful kitten. The pair seemed completely unfazed by our presence. As the mother catnapped, the kitten explored nearby, returning to attack her twitching tail.

Jungle Cats, mother and kitten

A note on the wild travel to Sundarbans from Kolkata (Calcutta): we rode in a convoy of several comfortable taxis. Our very good drivers had to weave Indian-style through all manner of transport, sacred cows, and livestock using the roads––a breath-taking experience for the uninitiated. Cows slowly meandered through heavy traffic, even sleeping in the middle of the road as cars whizzed past. We learned that the penalty for a driver who kills a sacred cow is the same as for killing a person: 7 years in prison. The penalty for striking a free-ranging goat or chicken is to pay the owner of that beast, not only the cost of the animal, but the cost of five generations of that animal!

One of our drivers had grown up in Mother Teresa's orphanage, and had been her driver for 12 years, meeting many of the celebrities who sought out Mother Teresa, including Princess Diana.

Yes, Indian culture is quite different from Western culture. We were reminded anew of that fact when we arrived back at the Holiday Inn, Kolkata, in the midst of a wedding celebration. The men were dressed in pink turbans with long flowing tails, and everyone was dancing at the hotel entrance.

Wedding festivities in India

Las Salinas, Cuba

Our group from New Mexico Ornithological Society wraps up its stay in the Zapata Peninsula with an evening trip to Las Salinas––a coastal region of mangroves, replete with large waterbirds.

Driving in, we find a big Blue Crab in the middle of the sandy road, and our driver Francisco rescues it.

Francisco wrangles a big Blue Crab (Cardisoma guanhumi) to safety.

Migrant warblers join the resident "golden" form of Yellow Warbler in these mangroves. Mangroves are the "trees that walk to the sea," an impression heightened by the big prop roots of the Red Mangroves. Along tropical coasts the world over, mangroves provide extremely rich habitat, giving food and shelter to wildlife, and acting as a nursery for many fish and invertebrates like the Blue Crab. They also filter out heavy metals, which sink into the fine sediments under the mangroves––an important environmental service. For humans living nearby, mangroves give protection from storm surges and tsunamis. Although many regions of mangroves have been destroyed by development in recent decades, efforts are also underway to restore this valuable habitat.

Red Mangroves are a common species at Las Salinas. The roots of these remarkable plants can exclude at least 90% of the sea salt from entering the plant.

A Red Mangrove in flower

Here at Las Salinas we see a couple of rare white morph Reddish Egrets. One of our group, Bruce Neville, lived for many years in Florida and knows the subtleties of identifying these coastal birds. He teaches me something new: in distinguishing the white Reddish Egrets from immature Little Blue Herons, look for some yellow-green wash on the legs of Little Blues. The legs of Reddish Egrets have only gray and black hues. I have always relied on features like differences in the bills, proportions, and behavior, and it's fun to learn a new field mark.

Reddish Egret (Watercolor by Narca)

But the flamingos steal the show! American Flamingos are an especially bright rosy-red, due to carotenoid pigments from the crustaceans in their diet. These birds glow in the setting sun.

American Flamingos execute a delicate pas-de-deux.

Flamingos are from an ancient lineage; 

fossil flamingos are 30-50 million years old!

Two flamingos catch the fading daylight.

Our NMOS gang savors the sunset, as flocks of flamingos and egrets wheel past. It's a fine end to a day that started with a Zapata Sparrow!

We make good use of an observation platform at Las Salinas.

Now––almost a month after our evening at Las Salinas––while exploring the far reaches of cyberspace, I find this mangrove-related passage to share with you. Annie Dillard wrote it:

"The planet is less like an enclosed spaceship––spaceship earth––than it is like an exposed mangrove island beautiful and loose. We the people started small and have since accumulated a great and solacing muck of soil, of human culture. We are rooted in it, we are bearing it with us across nowhere. The word 'nowhere' is our cue: the consort of musicians strikes up, and we in the chorus stir and move and start twirling our hats. A mangrove island turns drift to dance. It creates its own soil as it goes, rocking over the salt sea at random, rocking day and night and round the sun, rocking round the sun and out toward east of Hercules."