The Mangrove Restoration Project

When is a tree not a tree? When it’s also a mangrove! Wait, before you shut down whatever device you’re reading this on, give me one second to explain that awful “joke”. I needed to grab your attention because I have some really important stuff to tell you about, and as all the Mojang Studios devs can attest to, I believe that rolling eyes are focused eyes. 

The Wild Update was released earlier this month, and one of the new biomes was the mangrove swamp. These areas are filled with towering mangrove trees, large mangrove roots, and sweet little saplings called propagules. Like a lot of things in Minecraft, they also exist in the real world. And like a lot of those things, one of the reasons that we added them to the Overworld is to show everyone how cool they are!

Real-world mangrove trees have a huge impact on our environment. Just like all plants, they need carbon dioxide to grow. Thanks to their big, tangled root systems that grow underwater, mangroves are able to store that carbon dioxide for thousands of years after the tree itself dies. This is really important for our planet’s health, and mangroves can only trap all that carbon dioxide if they grow in a healthy forest. We need to act now to preserve and restore our mangrove forests, because only half of them remain.  

To support our vision to Building a Better World, Mojang Studios will be donating $200K to The Nature Conservancy to protect mangroves. We have also partnered with Everbloom Games to bring you a free map, Rooted Together, which you can play to have fun and learn about mangroves!  

Read more about our work to protect mangrove trees here, and download the Rooted Together map for free here! You can also tune in to charity streams hosted by four global content creators to watch them play through the map later this summer.