Winter 2004

by Alfredo Quarto

“Amphibious rainforests.” “Coastal nurseries.” “Roots of the sea.” Not bad monikers for an ecosystem once widely described as a foul-smelling, insect-infested wasteland. Mangrove forests are increasingly recognized and appreciated as one of Earth’s most productive and biologically diverse habitats. Given their previous reputation, however, they also are among the world’s most threatened habitats from decades of abuse and exploitation.

Thriving in two worlds at once, salt-tolerant mangroves accommodate the needs of both aquatic and terrestrial wildlife. Their semisubmerged tangle of roots offers refuge and nursery areas for fish, crabs, shrimp, shellfish, and other aquatic species. Loosely interwoven branches provide hundreds of waterfowl, shorebirds, waterbirds, and songbirds with nesting and feeding sites adjacent to critical water resources. Some Latin American countries have recorded more than 500 bird species in their mangrove areas, which likewise host manatees, monkeys, amphibians, and other fauna.

Mangroves supply food, tannins, fuel wood, medicinal ingredients, and construction materials to coastal communities. They also protect shoreline property from storm damage and erosion and prevent silt and polluted runoff from reaching coral reefs and seagrass beds.

Mangrove forests once blanketed coastlines and estuaries throughout tropical and subtropical Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Isles of Oceania, , but now less than half, or approximately 18 million hectares, remain. Overharvesting for timber and charcoal, urban expansion, pollution, coastal road construction, industrial development, and large-scale shrimp farming are culpable, with the latter potentially accounting for up to 30 percent of current destruction.

The rapidly expanding shrimp-aquaculture industry, largely fueled by voracious consumer demands in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Europe, poses one of the gravest threats to the world’s remaining mangrove forests and the wildlife and communities they support. An estimated 1 million hectares of coastal wetlands, including mangroves, have been cleared worldwide for conversion to shrimp farms that range from one-half hectare to hundreds of hectares each. A telling sign of this boom-and-bust industry is that approximately 250,000 hectares now lie abandoned due to diseased shrimp and polluted waters. In Latin America, barbed wire and armed guards posted around shrimp farms prohibit local fishing communities from accessing the mangrove forests they traditionally used. Also displaced are native nursery grounds of aquatic species, including shrimp, important to local economies.

Since 1992, Mangrove Action Project (MAP), an international nongovernmental organization, has worked with partners worldwide to halt mangrove destruction and promote sustainable alternatives. Their growing concern is the rapid proliferation of shrimp farms in Brazil, which houses the world’s second largest expanse of mangrove forest with over 1 million hectares. Brazil produced 60,000 tons of farmed shrimp in 2002, exporting 90 percent. This tonnage will likely more than double by 2005 as shrimp farmers from other countries continue to leave their beleaguered coasts to start here anew.

The MAP, therefore, conducted one of its regional “In the Hands of Fishers” workshops in Brazil in May 2003, bringing together more than 60 stakeholders from Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. All were members of grassroots organizations and fishing communities and active in the mangrove network known as Red Manglar. Participants discussed common mangrove conservation concerns, particularly Brazil’s burgeoning shrimp-aquaculture industry, exchanged information, shared lessons learned, formed new partnerships, and developed regionally coordinated projects. The World Conservation Union, Tropical Rainforest Programme - The Netherlands, and the Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation funded the workshop, and MAP and the Brazilian nongovernmental organization Terramar co-coordinated it with assistance from Red Manglar members.

Just as mangroves are the “roots of the sea,” this expanded network of partners will continue to strengthen and spread the roots of the mangrove conservation movement throughout Latin America.