Shrimp - Ecuador Community Tour Greenpeace is carrying out a tour of Ecuador's northern pacific coast to determine the current status of the mangrove forests in the region. These forests, for years, have been threatened by the destructive practices of the shrimp aquaculture industry. Update 18 October, 2000 300 Activists replant mangroves on illegal shrimp farm

Click on the dot on the map to read a report from the community.

Over 300 activists entered an illegal shrimp farm near Muisne, Ecuador today and replanted a two-hectare area with mangrove seedlings. The area, in the Bilsa estuarine about five kilometres from Muisne, is just one small area along the North Pacific coast of Ecuador where mangrove forest have been clearcut to make way for industrial shrimp farms. Today's activities are part of a campaign called "Give us back the mangroves" which is bringing together local communities, environmental groups in Ecuador including the National Co-ordinator for the Defence of the Mangroves, and Greenpeace in the fight to save mangrove forests and subsistence resources.

"As part of our ancestral rights we must recover these areas," said Santa Cagua, Vice president of Fundecol, the Foundation for Ecological Defence and a founding member of the National Co-ordinator for the Defence of the Mangroves. "With this reforestation we are returning life to the mangroves and we continue our fight to protect our resources."

It has been illegal to log mangrove forests for shrimp farming since an Executive Decree in 1994. The illegal shrimp farm in the Bilsa estuarine built by Gregorio Andrade was destroyed in June after the Port Authority of Esmeraldas, which has legal jurisdiction on bays and beaches, authorised Fundecol to break the dikes surrounding the shrimp farm.

In a direct contradiction to the Port Authority's decision, the Ministry of the Environment absolved Andrade of the charges against him; according to the Ministry he had not committed the infraction of illegally logging the mangroves.

"We acted within the framework of the campaign "Give us back the Mangroves" and with this action we highlighted the total lack of compliance with the law," said Elmer Lopez of Greenpeace. "We demand that no new shrimp farms be built and that existing ones not be expanded. Any shrimp farms built after 1994 should be restored to mangrove forests."

Today the community begins the task of not only rebuilding the mangrove forest, but an interdependent ecology they depend on.

"I say to those who eat shrimp - and only the rich people from industrialised countries eat shrimp - I say that they are eating at the same time the blood, sweat and livelihood of the poor people of the Third World,"
-- Quote from India's Shri Banke Behary Das, member of the People's Alliance Against the Shrimp Industry.

Ecuador Community Tour - Introduction
First update: Genaro Alfonso Perea Sanchez in San Lorenzo

Read more:
Shrimp - The Devastating Delicacy - An introduction
Ripped out at the Roots - The destruction of Mangrove forests.
Human Impacts - The effects of this lucrative export trade on local communities.
Don't Be 'Shellfish' - What Greenpeace is doing and what you can do.
Shrimp facts and figures
Photo Gallery