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Come Tuesday, March 25, the
National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) in collaboration
with the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus will host
a four-day Mangrove Restoration Workshop, at the UWI Marine
Laboratory in Port Royal.
A Media Briefing which will
take the format of a short question and answer session on the values
and functions of wetlands and the need to restore mangroves will
kick off the function. Limited tours of the restoration sites will
complement the morning’s activities. Journalists and news editors
are invited to confirm their attendance and reservations at the
earliest convenience.
The workshop, which forms a
part of NEPA’s observance of 2008 as the International Year of the
Reef (IYOR), will provide stakeholders with additional training
opportunities and monitoring skills. It is intended to bring into
sharp focus the linkages which exist between the land and the marine
resources especially coral reefs.
The workshop also serves to
demonstrate NEPA’s continued commitment to its mission “to promote
sustainable development”, by ensuring protection of the environment
and education of resource managers. Other objectives include
facilitating presentations by the UWI which will discuss local
perspectives in the context of attempted replanting efforts to date.
In an effort to provide an
international perspective and added guidance in mangrove
restoration, Keynote speaker Mr. Roy R. Lewis will speak on
“Mangrove Restoration Techniques”. Roy R. (Robin) Lewis is the
founder and president of Lewis Environmental Services, Inc., an
environmental consulting firm located in Tampa, Florida, which was
founded in 1989.
Since its inception the Lewis
Foundation has designed more than 125 completed wetland restoration
projects in Florida, South Carolina, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin
Islands, Nigeria and Thailand. His work has been published in The
Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the Orlando Sentinel.
The participants for the
workshop have been invited from the NGO community, the UWI and NEPA,
itself, to ensure that when restoration, as a mitigation strategy
for development, is proposed the knowledge and expertise garnered
can be brought into the evaluation process.
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