The Central American nation of Belize loves its mangroves. Belize is one of the smallest countries in Central America and yet outside of Mexico, we have the third largest reserve of mangrove in the region. It has only been within the last decade that their importance to the marine environment has been widely accepted by scientists. There is nothing magical about how mangrove work. Mangrove trees store the energy of the sun and the nutrients in the silt carried by the upland rivers within their leaves.
Mangroves produce leaves year around, shedding and growing new leaves on a continual basis.
As the leaves fall, the leaf litter provides the foundation for nearby marine and terrestrial food chains. With this huge supply of food, the mangrove swamps are a nursery ground for most sport and commercial fish species. As a result, mangrove based energy and nutrients are exported to surrounding coral reefs and grass beds. It has been suggested that the 500,000 lives lost in the 1970 typhoon in Bangladesh was partly due to the destruction of coastal mangroves for rice paddies. Despite the mounting evidence for the critical ecological importance of the mangrove community, many people still view them as mud filled swamps, which are better off being filled and developed.