The immediate appearance of the restoration site looks like a sandy mudflat. How can that be a good thing?
Restoring habitat to a more natural system takes time and there is a period of time when the construction makes the restoration area look relatively barren. Even so, the natural wetland begins to recover almost immediately. Within weeks after work has ceased, fiddler crabs return to the restored marsh in large numbers. After a few months, marsh plants such as sea purslane and glasswort begin to come back and establish productive wetland habitat. These plants trap seeds of black mangroves and other marsh plants that are on nearby lands, and in 3–5 years, the restored areas are well on their way to fully functioning black mangrove wetland systems. During the restoration, the large amphibious track hoe machinery used to fill the man-made ditches leaves behind a seemingly devastated landscape. Mangroves have lined the ditches and mixed native upland and nonnative exotic plants have grown on the mounds of spoil created when the original ditches were dug. At restoration, the spoil mounds are
