Island Press Field Notes
Bimini has become a battleground between the forces of coastal development and mangrove protection. A huge resort development on the western side of the island has chomped through large swathes of mangroves and threatened marine habitats with a blanket...
Sometimes you can push hard on doors of opportunity and they remain steadfastly closed. That was my experience in Cuba, where for innumerable reasons the careful plans I had laid kept being upended by unseen events. But the compensations of travel in...
The Zapata wetland is one of the prime destinations for anglers who target the feisty, fast-swimming bonefish. My guide and I spent a morning cruising the shallows of an area called Las Salinas with an angler who knew where the best place for bonefish...
The vast Zapata swamp in on the southern coast of Cuba had long been on my wish list of mangrove sites, both because of its unique wildlife and also because of the basic intrigue of this country that has cocked a snoot at the Western world. My first...
I travelled to Massachusetts to talk to a mangrove expert about ecological economics, and took time out to pay respect to one of nature’s greatest freedom fighters, who showed us the way to transcend the soulless rhetoric of materialism. . ....
Sometimes the best way to move forward is to go sideways, and while exploring mangroves in Brazil I took time out to visit my son in Salvador de Bahia, and gained inspiration from an art exhibition and a Brazilian sport. . ....
Writers need heroes—or at least this one does, and while looking at mangroves in Florida I decided to make a pilgrimage to the home of one of American literature’s most famous sons: Papa Hemingway. I wasn’t disappointed. . ....
The Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge is one of the great mangrove preserves of the United States. In fact, here mangroves are spreading where they’re not wanted—into former freshwater swamplands that were drained for a grandiose housing...
While in Caravelas I met people whose lives are intertwined with mangroves. They live amongst them, make their livelihood from them and revere them. Here is what I wrote after meeting some of the fishers of Caravelas. . ....