Katmelo San Nicolas, left, and Martin Abendan from Elusive Kulture car club dig up the soil to plant a talisai among a group of coconut trees at Agingan Beach.
CNMI Forestry and Elusive Kulture car club planted native trees at Agingan Beach, south of Coral Ocean Resort on Monday, Oct. 14.
CNMI Forestry’s Pedro Tudela told Variety that they provided pago, putting, talisai, and various other seedlings that can thrive on beaches. There were already rows of young coconut trees planted by CNMI Forestry from two months ago, Tudela said. For its part, Elusive Kulture will use agroforestry techniques to plant the other tree species.
Katmelo San Nicolas, from Elusive Kulture, said their car club wants to be a good community steward.
“We’ve been focusing on giving back to the community,” he said. “[Tree planting] is one of our big projects. It’s one way to positively impact the community, and it helps the environment.”
Tudela said Agingan Beach has been affected by runoff. He said fresh water and the soil it carries into the ocean can smother reefs, which will negatively impact fish. Trees hold the soil together, preventing it from being washed away due to rain, he added.
“We want to act now to try to save the reef,” Tudela told Variety. “We’re trying to put native trees that will be salt resistant. And we’ll see what we can plant in the future.”
He points to Laly 4 as an area where CNMI Forestry has found success with its tree plantings. Tudela said over 40 plants that CNMI Forestry placed there are still healthy. At Marine Beach, he added, CNMI Forestry has planted dozens of trees, but none have survived.
Tudela said CNMI Forestry surveys their newly planted seedlings every month, and found that the plants at Marine Beach were either uprooted, “cut with machetes,” or otherwise disturbed.
Tudela hopes the public can help the plants thrive.
He said CNMI Forestry places wooden stakes near their seedlings as markers.
“As a forestry guy, I want to leave a message to the public: If you see a newly planted tree out on the beaches, leave it alone. It’s for a purpose,” he said. “Leave it as how you care for your kids. These plants are like kids as well. We should be thankful that someone is taking their time out there and going out and planting it to help nature. If our erosion starts to happen, then we’re not going to have a lot of fish that we used to have.”
