Seeds of change: Group works for mangrove
reforestation
A project to replenish the area's
native mangrove forest is becoming a labor of love and a work of art through
the Reclamation Project.
By
Rashida Bartley
U/Miami News Service
The Miami Herald - Neighbors (Cover Story)
October 29, 2006
The
day was hot, sticky and smelly -- a mosquito's paradise and a beachgoer's
nightmare -- unless, like Xavier Cortada, you were on a mission to help
reforest South Florida's mangroves along Biscayne Bay.
Cortada, 42, a noted Miami artist and
environmental activist, recently trudged through the mangroves of Oleta
River State Park in North Miami and Crandon Park in Key Biscayne.
Accompanying him was a team of five or six volunteers, some wearing rubber
boots, others in old sneakers and gloves, who painstakingly collected
seedlings that had fallen prematurely.
''The mangroves are kind of stinky,'' said
Miami Beach resident Alex Montalvo, who participated in the Oct. 13
collection at Oleta River State Park and in other similar projects.
''Actually, the smellier the swamp, the healthier it is,'' Montalvo said.
For Cortada, a healthy swamp means
bringing back the trees that once filled the miles of mangroves that were
Miami Beach before development. The mangroves, he said, were destroyed to
make way for streets such as Lincoln Road. Now, as part of the Reclamation
Project, businesses in South Beach and children at Key Biscayne Community
School will care for more than 2,500 collected seedlings, Cortada said.
''We are taking what nature throws away
here and putting it in a place where man has thrown away nature,'' Cortada
said.
Volunteers are canvassing South Beach
shops to hang the seedlings, which are in clear plastic cups, in their
windows. The project, which was launched earlier this year, is designed as a
public arts program.
A number of community and environmental
organizations, including Citizens for a Better South Florida and Miami-Dade
County Department of Environmental Resources, designed the Reclamation
Project, which so far has received about $5,000 in donations, including
$2,500 from Miami-Dade County Cultural Affairs, Cortada said.
''The art is not having people collect
seedlings; the art is having the volunteers -- the ambassadors -- ask the
people inside those concrete structures to have nature inside their
offices,'' Cortada said.
Businesses and Key Biscayne schoolchildren
will be responsible for caring for the seedlings, which primarily involves
watering them, until mid-December when Xavier and his volunteers will
retrieve the budding plants and replant them along the bay.
In Key Biscayne, the Community School's
PTA is coordinating a project with science teachers so children can take
home a mangrove seedling to grow and then plant at Bearcut Preserve or Bill
Baggs State Park.
In Miami Beach, Books & Books on Lincoln
Road already has hung 72 of the seedlings in its windows.
''It is beautiful and evoking enormous
response,'' said Books & Books South Beach store manager Vivienne Evans.
Customers, she said, have expressed genuine interest in the project.
''It seems to me that people are
interested in the plight of the mangrove,'' Evans said.
Cortada said that is the kind of public
reaction the arts project wants.
''My audience is not the people who know
about nature; my audience is the people who have no clue about nature,'' he
said.
During the Oct. 18 seedling collection at
Bearcut Preserve at the north end of Crandon Park, volunteers learned about
nature and its enemies. Along with the expected bugs, ants and mosquitoes
were combs, bottles, deodorant containers, shoes, oil bottles, sneakers and
flip-flops.
''I hate all the trash,'' said Gisela
Franceschi, a mother at Key Biscayne Community School.
Reclamation Project manager Jackie Kellogg
said it is important to see beyond the bugs and trash.
''These are our great oaks,'' Kellogg said
of the small seedlings. ``This is a forest.''