Ingela Lacle is more determined than ever to continue planting and expanding the growth of local flora and mangroves on their property, and what’s more to promote and motivate others to do this as well on other parts of the island.
Aruba Ocean Villas in Savaneta continuously plants native flora, focusing on mangroves which are essential for our existence. In the beginning, it seemed like an ambitious project by Mrs. Osyth Henriquez, developer and designer of Aruba Ocean Villas together with her hotel team, and with the assistance and cooperation from the new planting guru on Aruba, Ingela Lacle.
The goal is to plant more than 1000 mangrove plants near the coasts where they can continuously grow in their habitat. Ingela Lacle is collecting, replanting, and counting the newer planted mangroves planted in special bamboo pots for this project. Ingela Lacle expresses 4 types of mangroves at Aruba Ocean Villas.
“We are collecting seeds daily to replant in bamboo pots. To my amazement, I discovered that there are 4 species of mangroves at this place. There is the popular red mangrove, which has long seeds, falls in the water, and remains floating until there is a place to plant itself. What we are rescuing are the ones that reached ashore and we are replanting them in a special soil that we cultivated ourselves” says Lacle. Other mangroves that were found include white mangroves, black mangroves, and the popular fofoti. All of these are protected mangrove species that are only grown in saltwater.
Ingela Lacle admits that she was very critical of Aruba Ocean Villas in the past, and wasn’t sure that the mangroves would be in a good state. Today she’s a big fan of the project. She said with great enthusiasm: “ As soon as I jumped into the investigation on the theme of mangroves, I realized the opportunity to promote replantation of mangroves and bring ideas forward on how to rescue our mangroves, which is essential for our environment”.
Ingela has big plans for the future to expand the project in activities to promote the replantation of mangroves and is expecting or counting on the involvement of volunteers for the business. She finalizes by saying: “My wish is that every hotel near the beach tries to plant mangroves to maintain our beaches as a form of protection of our coasts.”
Aruba Ocean Villas is working since the beginning with international experts in the world environment, to present a genuinely natural habitat for our visitors (tourists) to experience something unique.
