Amazon: Communities defend larger mangrove forest – 03/31/2024 – Environment

Often in the news around the world for its imposing forest, the Amazon is a diverse biome, with several distinct ecosystems. Among them, mangroves are little known, but no less important for the environment: it is in the north of Brazil that the largest continuous strip of mangroves in the world is found.

In addition to being more extensive, the Amazon mangroves are also the best preserved. Less than 1% of the entire mangrove area in the region, which is about 7,800 km^two, has suffered devastation in recent years. The mangroves extend from Amapá to Maranhão, passing along the coast of Pará. And much of this conservation is due to the presence of traditional communities.

Mangroves are, by definition, estuarine areas where fresh water from rivers meets the sea. In general, the water is brackish, and the vegetation is predominantly composed of white or red mangrove species, capable of expelling excess salt through structures in their roots.

Several species of animals also live there, both invertebrates and vertebrates, such as birds, fish and crustaceans, such as the uçá crab.

Mangroves provide food and income for quilombolas, riverside dwellers, fishermen and indigenous people. Furthermore, mangroves are an important capture site for carbon dioxide (CO_two), which helps combat global warming and reduce the climate crisis.

“The mangrove is our food. This is a forested area, and we eat because the mangrove is very close. We get our food, our medicine [plantas medicinais]. In the mangrove, we take out the crab, the sururu [um tipo de mexilhão]the turu [molusco]and there is also shrimp and fish”, says Roseti do Socorro Melo de Araújo, president of Arquia (Association Quilombola Remnant of America), in Bragança (PA).

According to her, everyone in the community knows how to work with crabs, fish and shellfish, including children.

“The mangrove is very important for us. Today this crab is getting further away, more difficult to catch. They are filling in the mangrove, throwing garbage. Big companies come to take sticks from the mangrove to make scaffolding”, he says.

Reports of fish shortages in the region are not uncommon. This has occurred due to predatory fishing, practiced without respecting the animals’ reproductive cycle, and overfishing, with animals being removed from the sea and sold in large quantities, often to supply external markets.

Quilombo residents have to go further and further — towards the ocean — to get their fish, says Roseti.

“Large vessels catch even the smallest fish in large quantities to make bait. [Eles] They don’t worry about what tomorrow will be like,” she says, who is also a community health agent in the quilombo.

Traditional communities are on the front line in protecting mangroves, as they depend on them for their livelihood — a bunch, the name given to a set of 14 adult crabs, is sold for R$10, according to Roseti.

Residents of the region have been threatened and persecuted because of their actions, she reports. The quilombola leader says that defending the mangrove forest ranges from demanding public bodies for basic rights, such as community recognition, to clashing with businesspeople.

“They wanted to create a shrimp farm in the mangrove forest. We mobilized because we knew it would harm us. We wouldn’t be able to catch the shrimp or do the trawling.”

Shrimp farming, or the farming of shrimp in captivity, is a source of income for businesspeople in the Northeast region, where a large part of the mangroves have already been devastated. To build tanks, it is necessary to destroy intact areas of mangroves. These and other activities, such as the exploitation of mangrove wood, threaten traditional communities and the ecosystem.

“We want to build a house, we don’t use wood from the mangrove, we use wood from the savannah. It has a way of cutting it that will sprout again, not the mangrove wood. Because if we take the wood from the mangrove the crab won’t have food for him. And who will suffer? The businessman [no restaurante] He doesn’t know where the crab came from, he’s just going to eat it, but someone made the sacrifice of catching it.”

One of the difficulties for communities occurs at the beginning of the year. In the months of January, February and March, crabs are closed. The period is for the animal to reproduce, so there are dates when collecting is not allowed. Communities agree that it is important to protect, but they demand financial support.

In addition to Quilombo do América, another community that depends on mangroves for its survival is Mangueiras, which is located in the municipality of Salvaterra (PA), on Marajó Island. There, residents also work to protect and maintain the space.

Jéssica Melo de Oliveira, president of the quilombola association, says that the community and the mangrove live in harmony, depending on each other. There, in addition to the crab, the inhabitants remove the turu, a type of mollusk that has a habit of burying itself close to the trunks of taller trees, the açaí berry and also plants used in traditional medicine.

“The forest is part of our culture. When we go to the clinic and don’t have medication, we seek knowledge of the [moradores] Older. We have indications for bites, stomach pain, everything you can imagine. Does so-and-so have a stomach ache? Take a boldo leaf, or an anaconda leaf or anaconda leaf to make tea”, she says, laughing.

This is why in many communities living near mangroves, hunger is not one of the many problems they face. Access to healthcare, land disputes, lack of employment opportunities, violence, availability of schools, transport — there are several challenges and needs. But, generally speaking, food tends to be a less problematic area.

“These families go to the mangrove to get their food. You are in São Paulo, you go to a fair or a supermarket to buy your food. Quilombola families go to the mangrove to get their lunch, their dinner”, summarizes Flávio Bezerra , ethnobiologist and researcher at UFPA (Federal University of Pará).

According to him, this process has, in addition to the act of searching for food, cultural importance, as it is a symbol of the knowledge of traditional communities.

“What is the most appropriate time? What is the movement of the tide in these mangroves? What is the lunar phase? How do you learn to harvest turu? This is work that involves observation, which involves young people learning from older people in that family” highlights.

“These elements come together with a whole social, cultural, symbolic and cosmological complexity, to understand the importance that these territories have for these families.”

Focusing on maintaining mangroves, the federal government created this month, on March 21, two new conservation units in the Salgado Paraense region.

One of them is the Filhos do Mangue Extractive Reserve, in the municipalities of Primavera and Quatipuru, with 4,000 families. The other is the Viriandeua Extractive Reserve, in Salinópolis and São João de Pirabas, with 3,100 families.

_{The Mangues Amazônicos series of reports is supported by the Pulitzer Rainforest Journalism Fund Center}