Aric Beckel of the Division of Environmental Quality, who is in charge of running the program on Rota, said they had just finished the month-long volunteer portion of the project.
“Each year we recruit 25 volunteers from the community on Rota to plant trees and grasses on highly eroded slopes (which we call badlands) in the Talakhaya area of the island,” Beckel said.
“The planting is an incredibly difficult work, requiring often more than an hour of hiking and carrying equipment just to get to the site,” he added.
Despite the rugged conditions, Beckel said over the last month, the community volunteers planted over 19,000 grass and shrub seedlings in the area.
Beckel said without vegetation, topsoil is eroded in the “badlands” each time it rains.
“This soil is eventually washed out into marine areas below the watershed where it settles on the coral reef and suffocates it, not only killing the coral but ruining fish habitat,” he said.
This year marks the fourth year of the volunteering program which has been running since 2007.
Beckel said the program is a collaboration between DEQ and Department of Land and Natural Resources on Rota, and funded by the Coral Reef Initiative grant.
In June 2007, 35 volunteers worked with DLNR-Rota to complete the largest single planting event of its history for the Talakhaya revegetation project. They planted over 22,000 grass and tree seedlings to protect the coral reef ecosystem by reducing and preventing non-point source pollution from running off into the ocean.
In 2008, 25 volunteers planted over 20,000 seedlings in the As Onan and Alesna areas of the Talakhaya watershed.
