 The St. Lucia National Trust has concluded two stakeholder consultations as part of an ecological assessment of the Makote Mangrove Forest, being undertaken by the Institute of Marine Affairs based in Trinidad and Tobago. In 2015, the trust and other stakeholders had confirmed a severe case of Mangrove dieback, which had first been revealed through Google Earth imagery. However, satellite images showed that a dieback was present from as far back as 2010. The team of consultants from the Institute of Marine Affairs began their research on the dieback in the Makote Mangrove Forest on 16 October 2021. In addition to the research and consultations conducted thus far, a field exercise with key resource management agencies was held Thursday 21 October. Joanna Rosemond is the Program Officer at the National Trust. So once this assessment has been concluded, the consultants will now go back to Trinidad and Tobago and they will conduct further analysis and they will come back to us in terms of what are some of the causes, potential causes of this dieback. And as part of this, they will be producing a rehabilitation and monitoring plan for the Mangrove Forest and that plan we are hoping to use and do further consultation with stakeholders and prioritize some of the things that we need to do as a country so that we can not just restore or rehabilitate the Mangrove Forest, but also continue to take the necessary measures so that we do not end up with a situation as we did with the last dieback. The team of consultants has presented some of the preliminary observations. Dr. Rahana Juman is the Acting Director of the Institute of Marine Affairs. So we would have collected data that still need further analysis, but from what we have done so far, what we're noticing or observing is that there's a lot less water that's coming into the Mangrove from the seaward side, from the landward side. So less fresh water, the areas within the Mangrove where salinities are very high and that's because you don't have much fresh water and much flooding. And also to only see what side the boom while it's open now, there's a lot of blockage because of the amount of sagassum, but primarily the sea grasses that have piled up and that has created sort of a boom that prevents the water from flushing the Mangroves. So we would have noticed some new areas of dieback and some areas that would have previously diebacked that is experience, rehabilitation or regeneration. We have installed tide gauges or water level sensors and salinity sensors that we would collect data over a period of time and we would have collected water and sediment samples for analysis. So at the end of the day we want to be able to say what is the most likely cause for the Mangrove dieback and what is required in order to rehabilitate this Mangrove forest. Vincent Clapp, Vice President of the Opical Charcoal and Agriculture Producers says the visiting team has imparted important knowledge to all stakeholders. The interesting thing that I will observe is the laser mapping, the transit and the thing that we did into the Mangrove and the tide gauges that we put in the Mangrove to actually see what the tide flow is in and out within the Mangrove system so they could determine about what amount of water comes in from the high tide and what amount of water comes out from the high tide. This is a very important thing for the Opical Charcoal and Agricultural Producers because a lot of them depend on that Mangrove forest for the livelihoods especially doing charcoal and they do also with the Seamos farm. When you have a good Mangrove forest, we trap the silt and prevent like the silt from going into the ocean and actually you could have a better Seamos production when you have clean and clean waters in the ocean. This is a very very good important thing, Makote Mangrove for actually the group is looking to do alternative livelihoods like beekeeping, hiking, tours into the Mangrove to actually educate people about what they have so it is a very very good thing that we're taking the time and to do the assessment and find out what we have and why our Mangrove is going back. Financing for the assessment is being sourced from the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund which is co-financed by the International Climate Initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.