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The Mangrove Action Project: At the Roots of the Sea

The Mangrove Action Project is a response to the fate of the world's remaining mangrove forests and the people who depend on them. Rapid industrial development is destroying mangrove forests at an alarming rate worldwide. Especially damaging to these important coastal forests is the recent expansion of prawn aquaculture. The prawn industry has gown in both Asia and Latin America, earning immense quick profits for big-monied investors, while leaving invaluable mangrove forests, coastal ecosystems and indigenous cultures in utter ruin.

Fishers Among the Mangroves

The inhabitants of the small villages of Thailand's mangrove swamps, who have fished for thousands of years, have recently initiated several efforts to restore their environment and safeguard their fish supply. However, since the early 1970s a seemingly innocuous creature - the black tiger prawn - has threatened their way of life.

As the prawn industry has expanded through Asia and Latin America,d it has destroyed large tracts of mangrove forests, which are ideal sites for prawn farms.

The Pehuenche and the Monkey-Puzzle Tree

While traveling with "Expedition Alerce '90", in southern Chile, trekking in a little-known area called Cahuelmo Fjord, I was told about a valley known as Quinquen. Located near the headwaters of the Bio-Bio River, Quinquen lies east of Temuco, near the Chile-Argentina border, Quinquen is the Mapuche word for "place of refuge." There an indigenous community struggles to maintain its connections with the past while the land is being contested by logging interests. The araucaria, the monkey-puzzle tree, sacred to these people, is being cut for profit.

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