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New Harvard Forest Publication: Mangrove Management Activities
In June 2006, Harvard Forest Senior Ecologist Aaron Ellison delivered the keynote address at the 2nd Meeting on the Mangrove Macrobenthos. Selected papers from this meeting have just been published in the Journal of Sea Research. In the lead paper, Ellison addresses mangrove management activities in the broader context of the diversity of animals such as crabs and prawns that depend on mangroves for substrate, food, and shelter and that also are exploited as human food sources. Exploitation of mangrove-associated prawns, crabs, and molluscs has a total economic value exceeding US $4 Billion each year, but world-wide patterns of exploitation fit the process described by economists as "roving banditry". Roving bandits are people and multinational corporations who move from location to location, rapidly exploiting and depleting local resources before moving on to other, as-yet unprotected areas. Ellison argues that to effectively manage mangrove fauna that management for ecosystem services, not immediate profit, is the only way to preserve the total biodiversity of this threatened ecosystem.
Ellison, A. M. 2008. Managing mangroves with benthic biodiversity in mind: moving beyond roving banditry. Journal of Sea Research 59: 2-15.
