But now, from unexpected hands, some small but fearsome allies have emerged as guardians of their survival: the bees.

Concern about the fate of the mangroves arose years ago in this Kenyan port city and gave rise to an official initiative whose good intentions languished until they died for lack of funds.

That scenario seemed to be the swan song of the mangroves that populate the coast from Mombasa to the Indian Ocean, increasingly depopulated because of indiscriminate logging for commercial use or, on a smaller scale, to feed the bonfires of the most disadvantaged sectors of the area.

But the conservation instinct of the inhabitants of the coast gave the situation a 180-degree turn with a little imagination, a lot of necessity and the use of an unexpected weapon.

The residents, fearful of the extinction of the mangroves, their first and best defense against rising sea levels due to global warming and frequent cyclones, turned to the planting of bee hives, which, it turned out, attack the loggers when they cut down the mangroves.

But the insects, held up as examples of industriousness, to the point that Napoleon Bonaparte took them as a symbol of his empire, have also acquired a reputation for generosity because their honey, harvested with the strictest care, provides residents with a welcome income in these times of hardship.

arm/mem/ms