There are some landscapes that embed themselves in your memory the moment you set foot on them. Climbing Creek, a freshwater swamp in Nickerie, Suriname, is one such place — but it is slowly being poisoned by saltwater, a catastrophe caused not by natural climate shift, but by an unregulated man-made canal dug three years ago. I joined a small team of military personnel on a journey into the heart of the swamp to document the damage and meet the team working to undo what has been broken. I’m writing this story not because it is pretty, but because it demands to be told.
It was early morning when our group gathered at Wageningen’s irrigation canal, the only access point to Climbing Creek. We knew this would not be an ordinary trip, but nothing could prepare us for what we would witness. Fifteen minutes after we arrived, the rumble of an outboard motor cut through the morning air — our boat had arrived. Stowing our backpacks, packed full of water, fruit and sweet buns, we climbed aboard, ready for the journey ahead. Even in these early hours, the tropical sun beat down heavily as our small aluminum craft cut through the canal’s waters.
The opening stretch of the trip was deceptively beautiful: dense greenery lined both banks, tall drought-stressed trees stood along the water’s edge, and coastal shorebirds foraged for their first meal of the day. Occasionally, fish jumped into our boat by accident, which we gently released back into the water. With four people on board including the skipper, the 15-horsepower engine wove carefully through dense vegetation, the captain working tirelessly to avoid reeds, roots, driftwood and abandoned fishing nets from catching in the propeller — a task that required considerable skill.
Three bends into the canal, we reached the small dam that normally requires our boat to be hauled across by hand. But the water level in Climbing Creek was far too low to allow through passage. We had no choice but to wait for a second boat to be sent from deeper inside the swamp to pick us up. As we stood on the dam, the full scope of the disaster unfolded before our eyes. As far as 100 meters out, the swamp was exposed, cracked mud stretching to the horizon. Only one small pool of water remained among the reeds, and the surface was literally churning with fish gasping and fighting for survival. In the mud nearby, I watched a silver-grey fish make its last weak tail flicker before succumbing to the conditions.
The air was thick with the acrid stench of rotting fish and decomposing mud. It was only at that moment that I understood the meaning of those tall, brown dead trees I had seen at the start of our journey. They had not died from drought — they had been poisoned by saltwater.
Three years ago, a private entrepreneur proposed digging a canal cutting straight through the swamp to connect it to the ocean. The plan was approved by the then-minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, but the real motives for the canal remain unclear. What is undeniable is the catastrophic aftermath: freshwater from the swamp drains out to sea, while salty ocean water flows inland into the wetland. The result has been mass die-offs of freshwater wetland fish, and the widespread death of native vegetation that cannot tolerate high salt levels. What I witnessed on the dam was just a fraction of the full-scale destruction.
After an hour waiting on the dam, we heard singing drifting across the mudflats. We spotted two soldiers working to bring a small boat to us: one sat in the craft, singing encouragement to the second, who waded through mud up to his thighs, hauling the boat forward over unstable ground as he searched for firmer footing. Eventually, the singing soldier jumped into the mud too, as the final hundred meters to reach us proved nearly impossible. The tide had already begun to recede back to the ocean, and water levels never reached the dam as initially predicted.
With the help of a third soldier who had joined our group, the two men finally pulled the boat up to the dam, sparing us from having to wade through the thick muck. Immediately, the three soldiers jumped into the irrigation canal to wash off the sticky mud, taking a quick, refreshing break. But the water they bathed in is not ordinary water — it is the water that bears witness to this quiet, unfolding ecological disaster, and I have seen it with my own eyes.
We loaded our minimal gear and a cooler onto the smaller boat and continued our journey deeper into Climbing Creek. With the boat heavier, the three men pushed it through thick mud, the scorching sun amplifying the rotten stench that hung in the air. Nowhere along the canal was the water more than a meter deep. Reeds hung over the banks, and loose dead vegetation floated freely across the surface. The skipper maneuvered carefully between reed beds, searching for the deepest channels, and often had to lift the propeller to clear debris or avoid collision with sunken logs. We inched forward meter by meter, until the engine suddenly overheated: sediment had clogged the cooling line, and the team could not clear the blockage. The engine cut out, leaving only the rustle of reeds, the gurgle of slow-moving water, and the calls of birds hanging in the air.
Notably, the area remains remarkably clean, free of plastic pollution and aluminum cans; the only trace of outside human activity so far had been the stray fishing net that caught in our propeller. The stench of rotting fish faded as we moved deeper, and we saw far fewer dead fish floating on the surface. On the muddy bank, the soldiers spotted jaguar tracks — they had seen other big cat signs in the reeds earlier in the day. We transferred to a small rescue dinghy while the team worked to swap out the disabled engine, and after several attempts we managed to get a weak enough cell signal to call our destination camp on the coast and share our location to request assistance. We tied our disabled boat across the canal to take shelter in the shade of two remaining trees on opposite banks, broke out our snacks, and shared water, bananas and sweet buns while we waited. Before long, the backup team arrived in a larger boat carrying a replacement engine, we transferred to the rescue craft, and continued on to the coastal camp.
Nestled among reeds, dead trees and surviving vegetation, a small basic camp has been set up on an elevated patch of ground in the blazing sun. For 18 days, a handful of military personnel have lived and worked here, on a mission to plant 12,000 mangrove seedlings to begin repairing the damage the entrepreneur’s unregulated canal caused. The saplings, donated by multinational energy firm Total Energies, traveled hundreds of kilometers from the Coronie region to reach the swamp: first by container to the dam, then along the same difficult route we had taken, transported in small batches because the low water levels limit what a single boat can carry, slowing progress to a crawl.
Seedlings are transported along the irrigation canal to the dam, where they are reloaded onto smaller craft for the final trip into Climbing Creek. Even at the dam, we saw hundreds of already dried-out dead saplings. Poor preparation and poor soil quality for the initial staging killed the young plants before they could even be planted. The soldiers, who have experience with similar mangrove restoration projects and detailed knowledge of mangrove ecology, were able to clearly explain what went wrong, and which remaining saplings still have a chance of survival. They note that better inter-agency communication could have prevented this waste of money, resources and effort. It remains a tragedy that hundreds of dead seedlings are now buried at the mouth of the canal.
The coastal plain is the final destination for the surviving seedlings; the team hopes a full mangrove forest will establish itself here within a few years, helping to slow saltwater intrusion and restore the wetland ecosystem. The camp is extremely basic, covered by a single tarpaulin divided into sleeping and cooking areas. Drinking water is scarce, because low water levels make resupply runs difficult. Soldiers bathe and do laundry using the brackish canal water. From the camp, the trip to the coastal planting site is even more difficult. For days on end, the men haul saplings to the planting sites, a physically grueling task that relies on primitive wooden sleds to carry small batches of seedlings over dry, exposed ground. Water levels have receded so far that the trip cannot be done by boat, but mangrove roots cannot tolerate being waterlogged during the early planting phase, so the dry, muddy ground is actually the ideal condition for young saplings to take root.
*Indra Toelsie
(Conclusion to be published tomorrow)*