Portuguese 
English 
Spanish 
5 min of reading 
0 comments 
Tito Varela, surfer and environmentalist from Isabela, northern Puerto Rico, led the planting of 30,000 mangrove seedlings in the last three years with groups of up to 60 student volunteers. To reach areas inaccessible on foot, the team started using a motorized parachute. Varela’s story began when surfing pulled him away from drugs in a neighborhood with few opportunities and connected him to the defense of the Caribbean coast.
Tito Varela found in surfing what many of his childhood friends did not find: a way out. Raised in a neighborhood in Isabela, northern Puerto Rico, where opportunities were scarce and drugs abundant, he discovered in the waves a refuge that functioned as therapy and direction. The ocean became his psychologist, as he describes it, and it was from this connection with the sea that the commitment to protect the coastline that saved him was born. In the last three years, Varela coordinated the planting of 30,000 mangrove seedlings in Isabela with groups of students and volunteers, using methods ranging from manual labor to motorized parachute flight.
The motivation is not abstract. Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico’s mangrove forests in 2017, destroying forests that sheltered the four types of mangrove found in the Caribbean and that functioned as marine life nurseries, storm barriers, and natural pollution filters. Varela, who served as national coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation in Puerto Rico, channeled the Californian organization’s experience with over 40 years of coastal conservation to transform the devastation into a restoration opportunity. The result is 30,000 seedlings planted and a community that has learned to value the ecosystem that protects its own coast.
How surfing saved Tito Varela from drugs and led him to environmentalism
According to information released by the DW Español portal, Varela’s story does not begin in the mangrove forests, but on the sand. Feeling the sand on his feet with a board under his arm and observing the tide was his greatest pleasure, and this daily ritual kept him away from the influences that led many of his friends down the path of drugs. In a neighborhood with few leisure and income alternatives, surfing offered Varela not only fun, but emotional structure and a group of friends with healthy interests.
-
The first winter cold spell is coming with an air mass at 2°C at 850 hPa, gusts of up to 70 km/h, and lows of 0°C to 5°C, with potential for frost for 3 consecutive days in Southern Brazil.
-
Operating at depths of over 6,000 meters, titanium-hulled nuclear submarines defy extreme pressure, reach up to 1,027 m in military records, and ensure strategic access to 98% of the ocean floor.
-
A new holiday in Brazil is expected to bring rain after temperatures reached up to 30°C and felt like 33°C on the coast of SP. A cold front arriving between Saturday night and Sunday will bring over 30 mm of rain and a risk of flooding, Inmet and Climatempo warn.
-
A Brazilian state teaches a lesson in building highways using concrete and impresses by replacing asphalt with a material up to 5 times more resistant, with a thickness of 26 cm and a durability that exceeds 40 years in challenging mountain ranges.
He studied mechanics and then marketing, a background that gave him the tools to organize the environmental defense of Isabela‘s coastline. With four friends, he began to mobilize against the degradation of the beaches he frequented, an activism that grew until he took over the coordination of the Surfrider Foundation on the island. The transition from surfer to environmentalist was natural: whoever depends on the ocean to live well quickly learns that protecting the coast is not idealism, it is survival.
The planting of 30,000 seedlings and the army of student volunteers
In the last three years, Varela organized planting drives that brought together groups of 50 to 60 volunteers at a time, most of them students who had never set foot in a mangrove forest. The initial reaction is usually hesitation, but when they enter the area and start planting, hear the birds, and see crabs and other creatures, they fall in love with the place, reports the environmentalist. The involvement of young people is not just labor: it is the formation of a generation that understands the value of the ecosystem.
The 30,000 seedlings planted cover areas that were devastated by Hurricane Maria and represent a restoration effort that few projects in the region have managed to match in scale. Isabela’s mangrove forests are home to the four types of mangrove found in the Caribbean, which makes the local forest a botanical and ecological heritage of regional importance. Each seedling planted is a bet that the vegetation will regenerate in time to protect the coast before the next hurricane, on an island where cyclones are a certainty, not a possibility.
The motorized parachute that takes seedlings where no one can go on foot
The operation’s most creative solution emerged from a meeting with volunteers. Mangrove areas destroyed by the hurricane became inaccessible by land, surrounded by water and mud that prevented the passage of people and equipment. One of the volunteers suggested using paramotors, motorized parachutes that allow flying over and landing in terrains where no terrestrial vehicle can reach. Varela adopted the idea, and two months ago, the equipment became operational.
With the motorized parachute, the team can access remote points of the mangroves to plant seedlings and collect data on vegetation recovery. The technique is uncommon in environmental restoration projects but solves a logistical problem that hindered planting progress precisely in the most degraded areas, where natural regeneration was not happening at the necessary speed. Aerial access also facilitates the monitoring of large extensions of coastal forest that would be impossible to cover on foot.
Why Puerto Rico’s mangroves are so important for the Caribbean
Mangroves are not just beautiful green areas. Recent research has shown that they absorb five times more carbon than terrestrial forests, making them essential allies in the fight against climate change. Furthermore, they serve as a refuge for a wide variety of wildlife, a breeding ground for birds, and a natural barrier against storms and coastal erosion.
Varela also supported the creation of the Los Jardines Submarinos natural reserve, which halted urban and hotel development in the north-central zone of the island. The reserve is home to the largest population of elkhorn coral in Puerto Rico and throughout the United States jurisdiction, an endangered species that depends on the health of adjacent mangroves to survive. The protection of the mangrove and coral reefs are parts of the same system that, if degraded, compromises fishing, tourism, and the island’s own capacity to withstand hurricanes.
The fight against pollution and neglect threatening the coast
The restoration work faces obstacles that go beyond nature. Water quality analyses carried out by the Surfrider Foundation team detected bacteria of fecal origin in most freshwater bodies analyzed in Puerto Rico, a result of poor maintenance of septic tanks that rupture during hurricanes and landslides. According to a study by American authorities, 99.5% of the island’s residents are exposed to contaminated water.
Varela denounces that the Puerto Rican government stigmatizes environmentalists as being against progress, when in fact they protect the natural resource that attracts tourism to the island. He himself reports having been hit by heavy machinery during a mangrove protection action less than a month ago, when a branch was deliberately thrown at him while he was trying to prevent the destruction of vegetation. The repression, however, has not slowed the movement: the 30,000 feet of mangrove planted are the most concrete answer a group of volunteers can give.
Do you know of any environmental restoration projects in your region or have you participated in planting seedlings? Tell us in the comments what you thought of Tito Varela’s story and if you believe that surfing and contact with nature can change lives as they changed his.
Be the first to react!