In a sign of their commitment to environmental conservation and as part of wider efforts to give back to their community, a team from HSBC Bank Bermuda Limited, has planted over 500 red mangroves in the Hungry Bay nature reserve.
Working alongside experts from the Bermuda Zoological Society’s (BZS) Micro Forest project, the team of 12 HSBC employees, including CEO Gregory Garnier and Head of Wealth and Personal Banking, Tanya Bule, carried out two new mangrove planting methods. These have been designed to help the juvenile mangroves grow quicker and remain more stable in the face of future hurricanes.
The first is the Riley encased methodology (REM), for which they planted the juvenile tree in a PVC tube knocked into the mangrove silt. The tube is split and tied with zip ties. This keeps the young mangroves stable if hit by a hurricane before their prop roots are fully developed. To further encourage growth and stability, these tubes are placed in a triangle formation, allowing the roots to grow and work together, maintaining stability once the tubes are taken away.
The second method uses large biodegradable fabric bags. The volunteers dug holes to fit each bag, placed the bags in the hole, filled them with sediment and planted as many mangroves as possible within them. By clustering the trees together, the root systems stabilise each other and the competition stimulates faster growth: “Competition breeds success,” explained Nick Coelho, Micro Forest officer at BZS. “The more they have to fight for their space, the faster they’re going to grow.”
Digging, planting and moving around in mangrove silt on a hot summer afternoon, is not for the faint-hearted but the volunteers laughed as they worked, got splashed with wet peat and even lost the occasional shoe:
“I’m here to discover more about Bermudian nature and how the mangroves interact with the water, and then, more importantly, I’m here to support giving back to the community,” said Garnier, adding: “It’s very important for me, personally, and for us at HSBC. This is the most beautiful place on earth and how we can help protect it and make it better for our kids is something I’m very passionate about.”
For Bule, the restoration of the Hungry Bay mangrove forest is particularly personal: “I used to come here as a child when there were a lot of mangroves around here,” she said. “More recently, we come down here a lot as a family, so it was a volunteer opportunity that spoke to me.”
It felt personal for other participants as well, especially those with children: “I’ve been telling my daughter about it. She’s very impressed,” says one HSBC volunteer.
This is because mangroves are a vital natural resource for combating climate change and protecting the environment. They sequester huge amounts of carbon and shield the coastline from storm surge. They also breed biodiversity: “All the migratory birds, all our local birds, even the invasive birds nest in these mangroves,” said Coelho. “Also, below the tide, it’s a nursery for our aquatic life. It’s a big biodiversity hotspot.”
Over the years, rising sea levels and stronger storms have taken their toll on these mangroves, particularly Hurricane Fabian in 2003, which destroyed a large part of the rock protecting the Hungry Bay forest. This intensified the erosion and decimated a huge area of these vital trees, some of which are hundreds of years old.
After a successful fundraising campaign by the Hungry Bay Restoration Committee however, a concrete seawall was constructed to replace the rock, and restoration efforts began in 2024 as part of the BZS Micro Forest project.
265 juveniles were planted last year, but only 72 survived Hurricane Ernesto. This led to more research and the new planting methods employed by the HSBC volunteers. HSBC is the lead sponsor for the Micro Forest project and, praised Coelho, “without them funding the project, we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing here.”
“What we’re grateful for is having the labour to try a couple of different things,” added Dr Robbie Smith, curator of the Natural History Museum at the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo (BAMZ). “Having a labour force who pays attention, wants to help get things done and fingers crossed we’ll learn something from the next hurricane and these methods will be better than the last ones we tried and that’ll lead us forward to the next episode.”
“I am very proud of our collective efforts because when we started, there was nothing, and now there’s a big pile of new mangroves that I’m hoping will survive and have a positive impact on the future,” said Garnier, looking down at what he and his team have finished planting.
Globally, HSBC puts around 55 percent of their community investment into climate-related activity and in Bermuda, they work closely with BZS on a variety of different projects: “What’s so great about working with BZS is that they have different opportunities catering to different interests so there is always some way to participate,” said Bule.
