Bermuda’s biggest mangrove forest has been given a new lease of life courtesy of environmental officials and area residents.

Restoration efforts at Hungry Bay in Paget, as reported by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, have closed with a substantially larger seawall to protect the reserve from currents and wave erosion than what was originally planned.

The project faced setbacks: Hurricane Ernesto, which hit the island last month, washed away three quarters of the mangrove seedlings planted at the site.

However, Robbie Smith, curator of the natural history museum at the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo, said volunteers were “optimistic that, with sustained planting, trying new planting methods and some breaks in storm frequency, we will see the seedlings develop their prop roots and persist, allowing the mangrove forest to develop once again”.

Mangroves at the back of the sheltered South Shore bay are protected under the international Ramsar Convention.

The wetland sanctuary has been hit by erosion as a result of rising sea levels, and a breach in the rocky peninsula protecting the mangrove.

Hurricane Fabian in 2003 created a gap in the rock that has been widened by subsequent hurricanes.

The Hungry Bay Restoration Committee, with property owner James Tucker, originally planned to create a four-foot-high seawall.

Work was paused late in 2023 after the project ran out of funding, but the DENR’s EnviroTalk newsletter said that the Bermuda Zoological Society adopted the proposal and was able to raise the remaining funding from a private donor.

The project started again in May, resulting in a wall five-foot wider at the base than what was originally planned, and with a reinforced concrete wall one foot higher.

Dr Smith said the project had finished with “a larger and proportionally more effective structure that should last but cost about double what we had planned initially”.

He said the operation was sustained with support from the Tucker family as planning applicants, while Bermuda Engineering donated the engineering drawings and Bermuda Environmental Consulting Ltd contributed an environmental assessment, environmental construction management plan, and a continuing resource management plan for free.

David Cox, of Landscape Architecture, donated architectural drawings, and area residents paid for and installed 700ft of garden hose to deliver water from a resident’s house for the on-site cement mixing, as well as financial donations. Dr Smith added that Richard Allen passed on materials discounts.

The Restoration Committee planted roughly 200 red mangroves over the winter, with the BZS providing seedlings.

Another 80 were planted in June with the help of volunteers from the insurance firm Chubb, while some of the dead mangrove trees were taken down and rock debris built into a berm to protect the seedlings.

Despite the losses from Ernesto, Dr Smith said the team would “learn something from the survivors” and continue regrowing the forest.

Mangrove trees, which thrive in salty, muddy conditions, form forests in sheltered coastal waters.

The forests provide an essential refuge for young fish to grow before they head out to sea.

Distinguished by their curving roots to stand in shallow water, mangroves build up dense layers of mud and peat that trap carbon.

They also provide habitats for a host of wildlife, from shellfish to birds, and form a buffer between coastlines and the sea, protecting the land from storms.

Bermuda hosts two varieties: the red mangrove, Rhizophora mangle, and the black mangrove, Avicennia germinans.