Guinea-Bissau Photograph by Kate Newman   Africa: Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast Mangroves   8,800 square miles (22,800 square kilometers) -- about the size of New Hampshire Vulnerable

· The Edge of Change
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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The Edge of Change

Visit a mangrove ecoregion and you’ll be on the edge of ocean and land--in a nursery where millions of creatures begin their lives and that others use as a stopover on their migratory journeys. Mangroves grow in rivers and estuaries near the ocean, where the land is fairly flat and tides are high enough to penetrate the land’s interior.

Special Features

Guinean mangroves extend far inland, up to 100 miles (160 km) from the sea, and range widely from Senegal to Sierra Leone. Tidal waters penetrate deeply into the interior, carrying salty water and allowing species such as mangroves to thrive. The seven mangrove species found in this ecoregion are more similar to those found along the coast of the Western Atlantic than to those of Eastern Africa, evidence that the African and South American continents were once joined.

	The West African manatee can eat more than 48 pounds (21 kg) of plants each day.

Wild Side

Mangroves provide the base for an extensive food web that supports migratory birds, marine animals, and offshore fisheries. At least ten species of large wading birds live in these mangroves, including goliath herons, purple herons, cattle egrets, striated herons, western reef egrets, greater and lesser flamingoes, African spoonbills, and sacred ibises. They have plenty of food to eat, such as violin crabs, spiny lobsters, and many fish and shrimp. Land mammals that visit the mangroves include vervet monkeys, marsh mongooses, royal antelopes, and western sitatungas, a kind of antelope. Aquatic mammals including white-cheeked otters, hippopotamuses, and endangered West African manatees live here, along with other marine dwellers such as Nile crocodiles.

Cause for Concern

Guinean mangroves are at risk from climate change and human development. Since 1968, rainfall totals have been falling. This alters the balance of fresh and saline water, their inland reach, and the habitats they sustain. Mangroves are also being lost to rice farming, shrimp farming, and urban expansion. In Guinea Bissau alone, about half of the mangroves have been lost due to human development. Small, protected areas of mangroves total less than six percent of the ecoregion.

For more information on this ecoregion, go to the World Wildlife Fund Scientific Report.