Folha series highlights preservation of Amazonian mangroves – 03/30/2024 – Environment

The Amazon mangroves are the most extensive and best preserved in the world. Such conservation is mainly due to the forest cover that covers the surrounding estuarine areas.

As a consequence, less than 1% of its entire length, which is approximately 7,800 km^two, has suffered devastation in recent years. Forest coverage accounts for more than 92% of this lesser-known ecosystem in the Amazon.

But there is also, in the maintenance of these places, a fundamental role for traditional communities, since they depend on the animals that live there for their food and source of income.

A Sheet publishes from this Sunday (31st) the series of reports Mangues Amazônicos, which will show, in texts, photos and videos, how quilombola, riverside and indigenous communities are fundamental to the resilience of this ecosystem and its most emblematic species, the crab .

The work is supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Journalism Fund.

Due to this intrinsic relationship between man and nature, the Amazon coast region, from the states of Amapá to Maranhão, has a high number of marine Resex (extractive reserves). The localities, however, live with different pressures.

The Caeté-Taperaçu Resex, close to the municipality of Bragança, in Pará, for example, has been impacted by the large number of foreign vessels and predatory fishing, which threaten fishing stocks and even the recovery of the estuarine ecosystem.

In the Soure Resex, on Marajó Island, also in Pará, quilombola communities are fighting for the demarcation of land and recognition of their importance. Residents of the place, which has mangrove trees over 40 meters tall, say that rice plantations and buffalo farming threaten their livelihoods.

The series, based on interviews with traditional populations, scientists and bodies linked to environmental preservation, will also tell how the region is at the center of discussions about the new oil frontier sought by Petrobras and the energy sector of the Lula government (PT) , the Foz do Amazonas basin, on the so-called equatorial margin.