GABON-ENVIRONMENT-URBAN-PLANNING-MANGROVES

Destroyed mangroves in the Angondje district of Libreville on May 17, 2018 where houses have been mushrooming without any coherent planning. - It's an environmental disaster," said Magloir-Desire Mounganga, an expert from Gabon's National Agency for National Parks (ANPN), as he strode across the soggy, spongy soil. "Here the mangrove trees have been completely razed, you can even see the marks left by the bulldozer," he said. The path in the district of Angondje Nton leads to a section of large homes owned by the wealthy. The svelte buildings rise on muddy terrain where mangroves once flourished. According to Medard Obiang Ebanega, a geographer at Libreville's Omar Bongo University, "Mangroves have the capacity to retain water and to combat coastal erosion with their (extensive) root systems, which also act as nurseries for marine species" . (Photo by Steeve Jordan / AFP) (Photo by STEEVE JORDAN/AFP via Getty Images)