A SHORT text message came on Tuesday last week from Kupang village in the coastal area of Sidoarjo. It was brief: api-api mangroves survive, some rhizophora have perished. Subandono Diposaptono promptly copied the message into a notebook.

Two weeks earlier, Subandono carried a truck of mud from around the Banjar Panji 1 well to Kupang village. The mud was contained in hundreds of buckets with 2-month-old mangrove seedlings. If they survive, the ma