Adaptive Collaborative Management Plan For Building Mangrove Resilience in Tanakeke Island

Tanakeke Island is located off the Southwestern tip of South Sulawesi Province, an hour’s boat ride over a choppy sea from the riverine harbour of Takalar Lama. Local boats are ill equipped to make this journey, out of the river mouth, through an often treacherous delta, across the open sea, and subsequently over the reef, sub-tidal and intertidal sections of the island. Flat boat keels are needed for these shallow sections of the journey, and do not perform well out to sea. When waves are high, and the river is swollen with rain, the crossing of the delta is exceedingly dangerous, a pair of vessels going down with loss of life in the two years since the RCL project has been operating.

The island itself is divided into four villages (desa), each with a handful of sub-villages (dusun). The entire island consists of 23 dusun with 3300 people, most of whom live in the intertidal region, with traditional stilt houses constructed on foundations of driftwood, garbage and sand. Freshwater is severely limited in most villages, reliant on rainwater collection and purchased water from wells located on terrestrial sections of Tanakeke and nearby Bauluang Island during the dry season.

The island could be described as an over wash mangrove system, an atoll featuring a variety of sub-tidal and inter-tidal habitats, with upper-intertidal and hinterland systems only on a small fraction of the island. As such, mangroves are predominantly of the type found at lower tidal elevations, above mean-sea level, with very little back mangrove species.