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Why restoring seagrass meadows would be a huge conservation win

Seagrass meadows are vanishing at a rate of 7 per cent a year, but this is a habitat that buries carbon up to 35 times faster than tropical rainforest. We must safeguard and restore it, says Sophie Pavelle

By Sophie Pavelle

6 July 2022

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Michelle D’urbano

SEAGRASS has been hailed both as conservation’s “wonder plant” and its “ugly duckling”. Since 1980, the world has been losing this flowering marine plant to pollution, disease and human disturbance at a rate of around 14,000 square metres per hour; in the UK, there has been a decline of nearly 92 per cent in the past century. But seagrass is a habitat that buries carbon up to 35 times faster than tropical rainforest. If silver bullets exist in conservation, could seagrass claim that title?

Though it covers just 0.1 per cent of the ocean floor, seagrass flanks coastlines…

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