The Other Tsunami Victim: Nature
The enduring image of the December 26 Indian Ocean tsunami will be the horrors of human suffering and devastation. But as the process of recovery and rebuilding begins, scientists are also assessing another kind of destruction that may have just as lasting an impact: damage to critical ecosystems.
Flooding has contaminated farmland and fresh water with salt throughout the region, and whole stretches of coastline were obliterated. Farther out, most coastal mangrove stands--important fish nurseries that also protect coastlines from erosion--are expected to survive. But coral reefs, which were just starting to recover from a massive die-off caused by the 1997-98 El Nino, may take decades to rebound. One Thai survey reported that 20 percent of the reefs near Phi Phi Island were damaged by the initial impact, and, says Australian coral expert Clive Wilkinson, debris washed out from shore can batter the delicate reef structures long after the tsunami recedes.
Lost. The very ecosystems threatened by the tsunami could also have helped to limit the extent of its destruction. Largely intact coral reefs in the Maldives are credited with sparing that island nation from the worst of the waves' impact, and satellite images of Aceh, Indonesia, show destruction there was worse in areas where mangroves had been cleared for development and fish farms. Noting that much of the native vegetation has been cleared from many stretches of Indian Ocean coastline in recent decades, environmental groups are calling for mangrove restoration as part of the recovery.
No amount of natural protection could have prevented all of the tsunami's destruction, experts agree. But, says Jurgenne Primavera, a marine scientist with the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center in the Philippines, environmental degradation almost certainly made the impact worse. "At the very least," she says, intact reefs and mangroves "would have saved some lives, and some livelihoods." -Thomas Hayden
This story appears in the January 24, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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