28 February 2003

LAKE SONGKHLA RESTORATION

Mangrove reforestation and dredging may hamper efforts to restore Lake Songkhla, an aquatic scientist says.

Mangrove reforestation is part of a state rehabilitation plan for the lake, which has been degraded by human activities.

Infrastructure projects such as road construction have destroyed mangrove forests in the lake.

Saowapa Angsupanich, a researcher at the Department of Aquatic Science, Prince of Songkhla University, said reforestation needed to be done carefully.

Ms Saowapa, who has studied aquatic animals in Songkhla Lake for almost 20 years, said mangroves grew only in areas influenced by saltwater and their numbers were not large.

These plants could not grow in freshwater and too much reforestation could reduce the water area, she said. ``We still need the water area as a habitat for fish.''

Loss of water is a serious problem in this 1,046-square-kilometre lagoon, the country's southernmost coastal lake linked to the sea.

Local fishermen were partly to blamed, as their equipment slowed water leaving the lake.

Ms Saowapa said excavating the waterbed could endanger micro-organisms such as benthic fauna,which live on the soil surface and are a source of food for fish.

``If they disappear, bigger animals would find it difficult to survive,'' said Prof Visut Baimai, Mahidol University's biologist and director of the Biodiversity Research and Training Programme, who funded Ms Saowapa's study.

Environment Minister Praphat Panyachartrak said that, contrary to some reports, the proposed 1.4 billion baht rehabilitation plan did not include plans to dredge the lake.

Treating wastewater discharges and mangrove reforestation could start this year.

State efforts to restore the lake would involve experts such as marine scientists Suraphol Sudara and Thon Thamrongnawasawat.