Mangrove Revegetation Potentials of Brackish-Water Pond Areas in the Philippines - Aquaculture and the Environment: A Shared Destiny - page 33

Fig. 1. Estimated extent of mangrove areas in the Philippines from 1918 (around 450,000
hectares) to 2007 (around 289,350 hectares).
Table 2. Top 10 provinces in terms of the area with expired FLA licenses in the Philippines.
It has long been noted by various authors that most of the brackish-water ponds in the
Philippines are either idle, abandoned, underutilized and in an unproductive state
(Primavera and Agbayani 1997; Primavera 2000; Yap 2007; Samson and Rollon 2008;
Primavera et al, 2012). There had been efforts to promote the reversion of these ponds to
mangrove areas however the implementing rules and regulations had been unclear, if not
nonexistent. In most cases, holders of FLA certificates are unwilling to yield the pond area
for mangrove restoration (Yap, 2007; Samson and Rollon 2008). These underutilized ponds