Let Them Eat Shrimp: The Tragic Disappearance of the Rainforests of the Sea
Language: English
Pages: 200
ISBN: B005ATXCG0
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In Let Them Eat Shrimp, Kennedy Warne takes readers into the muddy battle zone that is the mangrove forest. A tangle of snaking roots and twisted trunks, mangroves are often dismissed as foul wastelands. In fact, they are supermarkets of the sea, providing shellfish, crabs, honey, timber, and charcoal to coastal communities from Florida to South America to New Zealand. Generations have built their lives around mangroves and consider these swamps sacred.
To shrimp farmers and land developers, mangroves simply represent a good investment. The tidal land on which they stand often has no title, so with a nod and wink from a compliant official, it can be turned from a public resource to a private possession. The forests are bulldozed, their traditional users dispossessed.
The true price of shrimp farming and other coastal development has gone largely unheralded in the U.S. media. A longtime journalist, Warne now captures the insatiability of these industries and the magic of the mangroves. His vivid account will make every reader pause before ordering the shrimp.
Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico
A New Ecology: Systems Perspective
Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems
Edible Forest Gardens - Volume 2: Ecological Design and Practice For Temperate Climate Permaculture
With a guitar sings sad protest songs. Someone hands me a pamphlet with the title “Crying for Justice.” The cover shows a hand gripping a giant shrimp, fierce-eyed, mouth open to devour. This is how many people in Curral Velho see carcinicultura, the shrimp-farming industry: as a devourer of natural resources and livelihoods. Sister Mary Alice McCabe, an American member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, is helping the community in its struggle. “One of the difficulties in fighting shrimp.
Had lost their connection to the forests. “Traditional knowledge has been lost, and that is a cause of sorrow. Many Brazilians have only an economic knowledge, without respect for the environment. The Afro-indigenous view is that nature is a single entity, with humans a part of it.” The Galdinos and their cultural group have been helping children find their way into that worldview. I watch Dedê tutor a boy who is working on a mangrove T-shirt design. Outside, under an awning, other children are.
Abused ecosystems on earth. Why should this be the case, when they support such a wealth of species, perform so many services to the environment, and are relied upon by so many people? Why, as Steinbeck put it, are they so unloved? Put simply, because they are misunderstood. Instead of being seen as wetlands of international importance, they are regarded as wastelands of no importance. They still evoke the old “swampland in Florida” prejudice. This book aims to set the record straight. It.
With the twigs of red mangrove. Included in this pantheon are termites, scorpions, puss moths, roaches, bag worms, mites, spiders, and many more. Thirty-five of them are wood-feeders, and seven are specialist wood-boring beetle and moth larvae that feed exclusively on Rhizophora mangle twigs. Wood borers function as “ecosystem engineers”—gamechangers whose activities alter the ecological playing field for other creatures. A wood borer, for instance, may drill out the core of a living twig,.
Supreme feat of sediment trapping to hoist them over such an obstacle. Another snag for migrating mangroves is obtaining adequate fresh water. To cope with the stress of rising seas, most mangroves will need some freshwater input or the increasing salinity will push them into a physiological red zone. As pressure on freshwater resources intensifies around the world, mangrove wetlands are getting a decreasing share. They may be salt lovers, but even the most halophytic species cannot tolerate more.