ESMERALDAS, Ecuador (dpa) – Wherever shrimps are harvested in numbers along Ecuador’s Pacific coast, the topsy-turvy world of mangrove swamps has all but vanished.
Replacing the tenacious plants which survive in the muddy soils of tropical tide waters are kilometre after kilometre of standarized water basins filled to the brim with shrimps bound for export to the United States and Europe.These environmentally valuable habitats are conservation areas yet two thirds of the original 200,000 hectares of Ecuador’s coastal mangrove swamp has fallen victim to the chainsaw.One of the last unspoilt areas is around San Lorenzo near the coastal town of Esmeraldas but here too the mangrove community is being threatened by shrimp breeders who often resort to illegal methods.Gregorio Zambrano of the Fundecol environmental pressure group explains how they go about their destructive work. “They start off by cutting swathes into the thick mangrove swamp and cutting long ditches. After that all the trees are chopped down and the basins excavated.”Zambrano is from the Muisne, an area which owes its name to the river of the same name. Its many tributaries form countless islands which are deluged and laid bare again by the ebb and flow of tidal waters.The territory is ideal for mangroves, the woody plants that arch out of the salt water, building a knotty network which acts as protection from erosion by the sea and offers a home to valuable plant and animal species.A decade ago the complex eco-system here covered 20,000 hectares but now it has been reduced here to a mere 700 hectares. Seen from the water, where fishermen cast their nets and Indios paddle past with cargoes of wood and mussels in their dug-out canoes, the banks seem to be intact.Yet the strips of mangrove swamp only extend a few metres inland, hardly sufficient to hide the dams that mark the edge of shrimp basins, some of which cover 10 hectares.They take a daily supply of fresh water from the river via the ditches and once every three months, the contents of a basin are discharged into the environment, complete with dead animals, the residue of concentrated feedstuff and a cocktail of antibiotics used to make the monocultures resistant to bacteria.One hectare yields around 20 hundredweight of shrimps every three months. They are immediately sorted, their heads removed and they are deep frozen ready for export. Shrimp farming is regarded as a boom industry in Ecuador and over the last three years the seafood has become the country’s third most important export product.According to the breeders’ association, shrimps worth 400 million dollars were sold abroad in the first half of 1999. That makes Ecuador one of the world’s largest shrimp exporting countries.“The biggest profits are made by a couple of companies belonging to corrupt and wealthy Ecuadorian families who ruthlessly exploit the environment,” said an embittered Cecilia Cherez of the national ecological group Accion Ecologica. “The mangroves are protected by law and nobody is allowed to cut them down yet unless a miracle happens the last of them will be gone within a few years.”Most environmentalists have given up hope of experiencing a miracle. “At local level the police and authorities are not averse to taking bribes and the government won’t try to restrain the powerful breeders as long as export profits grow and flow into the rightpockets,” said Marcelo Cotera, president of Fundecol in Musine.“The government is schizophrenic. Perhaps an international boycott is the right way to open the world’s eyes to the fact that shrimp delicatessen meals are being paid for by the illegal destruction of mangrove forests,” she added.Hopes were raised last year when the Greenpeace vessel “Rainbow Warrior” came to Muisne and joined forces with the Fundecol activists in highlighting the destruction of the mangrove habitat. “We’ve since convened a national Save the Mangrove Day’ which will be marked every July 26,” said Cotera.At the same time as the La Rosario concern is setting up a new 1,000 hectare shrimp breeding facility in the San Lorenzo conservation area, local Ecuadorians are experiencing the repercussions of the mangrove loss on an everyday bais.“Around 3,500 families (half the population) have lost their livelihood here,” said the Fundecol spokesman. “Without the mangroves there are no mussels or crabs. The birds stay away and the ground becomes dried up and loses all its nutrients. Fishing suffers and the water is poisoned by shrimp effluent.”
