A Sea of Poison
Faber, Daniel
Now we're close to Leon. Liberated territory. A burning reddish-orange light, like the red-hot tip of a cigar. Corinto: the powerful lights of the docks flickering on the sea. And now at last...
...Due to lax environmental regulations, Nicaragua became a laboratory for pesticide experimentation in the early 1950s...
...0 By the late 1970s, some 1,004,796 acres of cotton fields had been carved from the ancient tropical forests...
...of Sussex, 1988), pp...
...Trees necessary to protect the fields impact of insecticide use, while simultaneously bolstering the economic value of the country's cotton crop...
...See Wolterding, "The Poisoning," p. 64...
...Ernesto L6pez Zepeda, "The Ecological Impact of Cotton Cultivation in El Salvador: The Example ofJiquilisco," (M.A...
...Scientists found the cotton bullworm in Nicaragua, for example, to be 45 times more resistant to methyl parathion than any previously known pest population in the world...
...economic embargo and contra war, however, gradually undermined experiments in revolutionary ecology...
...115-117...
...7 8 7 - 8 1 0 . 16...
...Howard Daugherty, Charles A. Jeannert-Grosjean, and H.F...
...The second kill comes at the beginning of the dry season when aerial spraying of cotton begins and pesticides drift into the mangroves...
...2 2 Regionwide, growers applied an average of 3,380 pounds of pesticide every year to every square mile of cotton land-4.4 pounds for every man, woman, and child in Central America...
...For instance, more than 1,000 male workers from the Atlantic banana-growing region of Costa Rica have been rendered infertile through overexposure to the nematicide DBCP, while another 5,000 exposed workers are considered at risk...
...1 5 7 -158...
...See Thrupp, "The Political Ecology," p. 199...
...Chemicals that poison the insect population appear to offer a "quickfix" to the problem, but they stimulate the emergence of resistant pests...
...Dissertation, University of California, 1969), p. 202...
...Today, the 700,000 people living in Central America' s cotton region have more DDT in their body fat than any other population of human beings in the world...
...and L6pez Zepeda, The Ecological Impact, p. 33...
...The result was the virtually complete dispossession of the country's peasantry from lands ecologically suitable for agriculture...
...al., Ecodevelopment, p. 30...
...In the mid-1950s, growers applied five main chemicals, five to ten times annually...
...1990...
...Instead they drift widely, contaminating local ecosystems, including groundwater sources, rivers and estuaries, fish and wildlife, nearby villages and towns, food crops, and adjacent cattle herds...
...8-11...
...To kill the explosion of pests and restore yields, growers increased not only the number of pesticide applications but the toxicity and variety of pesticides as well...
...About one-third of the 53 North American bird species which winter in Central America have suffered significant population declines...
...Honduras and Nicaragua were world leaders in per capita illness and deaths from pesticide poisonings during the 1960s and 1970s...
...Over 12 million pounds of this deadly chemical were applied in 1951, causing dozens of deaths and hundreds of illnesses among Nicaraguan field workers and their families...
...3 9 -46...
...See James Painter, Guatemala: False Hope, False Freedom (London: Latin America Bureau, 1987), p. 22...
...al., "Nicaragua's Revolution...
...One Pan-American Health Organization study reported 19,000 poisonings between 1971 and 1976...
...In fact, the largest 3.7% of farms along Guatemala's Pacific coast monopolized 80.3% of the land, according to some estimates, reportedly the highest degree of land concentration in all Latin America...
...As a result, relatively benign cotton pests once controlled by natural predators emerged in the 1960s as new malignant cotton pests...
...However, the more insecticides they applied, the more they needed to combat increasingly resistant pests...
...6. See Howard Daugherty, "Man-Induced Ecological Change in El Salvador," (Ph.D...
...For example, the half-life of the organochlorine pesticide toxaphene is 15 years in soil, meaning that 15 years after application, one-half of the pesticide remains in the soil as poison...
...These compounds may, in the long term, create even more serious health problems in the region...
...The effort to safeguard environmental and human health also increased economic productivity and independence, making the Sandinista government's early pesticide policy a model for "productive conservation" in the Third World, and focus of attention for the international environmental movement...
...157-263...
...See David Weir and Mark Schapiro, "The Circle of Poison," The Ecologist, Vol...
...4 7 - 6 8 . 18...
...Fletcher, Ecodevelopment and International Cooperation: Potential Applications for El Salvador (Ottawa, Canada: CIDA and Advanced Concepts Center of the Environment, 1979), pp...
...For a more sophisticated theoretical discussion, see Daniel Faber, "Revolution, Imperialism, and the Ecological Crisis of Central America," Latin American Perspectives (forthcoming), (Winter 1992...
...1, (Fall 1988), pp...
...In a highly competitive world market, these cotton farmers who rented tracts from large landlords, had little economic interest in protecting the long-term viability of the land...
...and U.S.AID-Guatemala Ib, (1981), pp...
...Thus, the tenant was "encouraged in his inclination to maximize his profits regardless of the costs in terms of soil deterioration...
...3 " In fact, the case of cotton is symptomatic of the larger social, economic, and ecological disaster that export-agriculture has created in The wave of the future: Non-traditional export crops like cauliflower, promoted by U.S.AID, promise ever greater pesticide abuse Central America since World War II...
...Transnational chemical corporations such as Bayer, Ciba-Geigy, Chevron, Shell, Stauffer, and Hooker flooded the Central American market with extremely toxic organophosphates and environmentally persistent organochlorines...
...Since 19 of the 25 most commonly used organochlorines prove carcinogenic in laboratory tests, the future may reveal high cancer rates among poor Central Americans...
...and Charles Brockett, Land, Power, and Poverty: Agrarian Transformation and Political Conflict in Central America (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988), p. 70...
...2 These forests and fields teemed with an abundance of animal life: howler and spider monkeys, ocelots, anteaters, grey fox, white-tailed deer, puma and other large cats...
...Even gallery forests of ceiba (kapok), donacaste, fig, and volador found along the edges of rivers were eliminated...
...See L.A...
...Therefore, health programs were an essential part of the project...
...The biologically impoverished Pacific coastal plain is quickly becoming a real example of Rachel Carson's "silent spring...
...Other beneficial and productive insects, like honeybees, have almost completely disappeared...
...VOLUME XXV, NUMBER 2 (SEPTEMBER 1991) 31Environment rivalled perhaps only by cattle...
...Only when these bonds of domination are broken can the process of ecological destruction be reversed...
...In El Salvador, for instance, 40% of the land designated as ecologically unsuitable for agriculture was occupied by peasant cultivators during the 1970s...
...In some cases, pesticides alone accounted for more than 50% of total production costs in cotton cultivation.2 This "pesticide treadmill," combined with a contracted world market, brought the cotton boom to a halt in the mid-1960s...
...Despite large doses of insecticides, Nicaragua's cotton yields plummeted 30% between 1965-69...
...2 8 In Costa Rica, pesticides have also all but exterminated armadillos, fish, and crocodiles along VOLUME XXV, NUMBER 2 (SEPTEMBER 1991) 35Repo oqon A#e4%"a Environment the Guanacaste River...
...The following year, the Ministry of Agriculture banned methyl parathion, only to have Somoza reverse its decision in 1954 under pressure from cotton growers, who praised its effectiveness in killing the boll weevil and other costly cotton pests...
...The plane coming down...
...cotton employed half a million workers...
...The first casualties come with the rainy season when downpours wash chemicals from the soil...
...Interestingly, the international health agencies proposed solutions that required pesticides produced by transnational corporations, despite the availability of more effective but less "profitable" solutions...
...and U.S.AID-Nicaragua I, Environmental Profile ofNicaragua, prepared by Steven L. Hilty (Tucson: Arid Lands Information Center, University of Arizona, 1981), p. 5. 7. See Peter Dorner and Rodolfo Quiros, "Institutional Dualism in Central America's Agricultural Development," Revolution in CentralAmerica, Stanford Central America Action Network, eds., (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983), p. 228...
...40-42...
...3. Tropical diseases such as malaria were a major barrier to the development of the Pacific coastal plain...
...These pesticides accumulate in agricultural soils, pond and river bottoms, animal tissue, and elsewhere, to be taken up later by plants or released by soil organisms to poison further...
...28, No.1 (January/February 1986), p. 9; and Sean Swezey and Daniel Faber, "Disarticulated Accumulation, Agroexport, and Ecological Crisis in Nicaragua: The Case of Cotton," Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Journal of Socialist Ecology, No.1 (Fall 1988), pp...
...and Daniel Faber, with Joshua Karliner and Robert Rice, "Central America: Roots of Environmental Destruction," Green Paper No.2 (San Francisco: EPOCA, 1986...
...Some growers were making up to 56 applications a season using 50-odd pesticide combinations...
...Ernesto Cardenal 1 WHILE THE "FIRST WAVE" OF ECONOMIC development in Central America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries transformed the rich oak-pine forests of the interior highlands into vast coffee estates and impoverished peasant plots, and large pockets of the Atlantic lowland rainforests into large banana plantations, the Pacific littoral escaped relatively unscathed...
...3 2 The dynamics of the pesticide treadmill, combined with declining world market prices, have once again damaged the profitability of cotton...
...Mothers in the cotton regions have been found to have as much as 45 to 185 times more DDT in their breast milk than deemed "safe" by the World Health Organization (WHO...
...See Browning, El Salvador, pp...
...See Daniel Faber, "Imperialism and the Crisis of Nature in Central America," Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Journal ofSocialist Ecology, No...
...See Weir and Schapiro, Circle of Poison (San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1981), p. 13...
...See ICAITI, An Environmental, p. 187...
...See L6pez Zepeda, The Ecological Impact, p. 55...
...Translated from Mario Payeras, Latitud de la Flor y el Granizo (Mexico: Joan Bold6 y Climent, 1988), p. 50...
...The author would like to thank Douglas Murray, Sean Swezey, Josh Karliner, James O'Connor, Bill Hall, Dave Henson, and Florence Gardner for their helpful comments and criticisms on this topic...
...Currently, the Chamorro government is pushing for a lifting of pesticide bans and the redistribution of 250,000 acres to large landowners, one-third for cotton, which would more than double the cotton land currently under cultivation...
...2 7 Many of the chemicals (like DDT) banned in the United States because of their devastating impact on wildlife continue to harm North American bird species which make Central America their winter home...
...No one knows how many will die...
...See M. Vaughn and G. Leon, "Pesticide Management in a Major Crop with Severe Resistance Problems," (Proceedings of the XV International Congress of Entomology, Washington, D.C., 1977), pp...
...Cotton growers externalize the social and ecological costs of production onto the larger society in the form of human health problems, livestock and crop contamination, and ecological pollution...
...Along Nicaragua's entire Pacific plain, cotton land expanded 400% between 1952 and 1967, while peasant lands devoted to corn, beans, sorghum, and other food grains dropped over 50%.7 In Guatemala, some 221,312 acres of the Pacific lowlands were in cotton by 1972, almost completely displacing the area' s poor campesinos...
...See Tensie Whelan, "Rebuilding A Tropical Forest," Environmental Action (November/December 1987), p. 16...
...Broadwinged hawks, crested forest-eagles, pelicans and all insect-eating birds have diminished dramatically in recent years...
...With their habitats destroyed, many species of animals, including howler monkeys, anteaters, and white-lipped peccaries were rendered extinct...
...Some 90% of Costa Rica's cotton growers, for instance, have gone bankrupt since the mid-1980s.3 3 Such repeated ecological crises represent a classic example of the manner in which agribusiness in Latin America is increasingly destroying the material foundations of its own existence...
...See Martin Wolterding, "The Poisoning of Central America," Sierra (September-October 1981), p. 64...
...See L6pez Zepeda, The Ecological Impact, p. 34...
...In contrast, the chemicals decimated the populations of economically beneficial insect predators and parasites which attacked potential cotton pests...
...Only 2% of the original forests remained...
...In the now dusty and eroded agricultural fields of Central America's Pacific coastal plain, tens of thousands of poor seasonal workers travel from distant highland farms and nearby urban barrios to toil in the hot tropical sun harvesting cotton, "white gold...
...Falcon and Rainer G. Daxl, "Informe al Gobierno de Nicaragua sobre Control Integrado de Plagas del Algodonero," (Managua: FAO/PNUD, 1977...
...The attack occurred during a critical moment in the pest cycle, forcing the Nicaraguan govern- ment to remove impounded insecticides from warehouses, and dealing the IPM program a serious setback...
...9 The result: rampant deforestation, declining fallow cycles, severe soil erosion and land degradation, watershed destruction, critical fish, wildlife, and woodfuel shortages, declining food production and increased poverty-all evidence that the resource base for much of Central America's peasantry has reached a point of ecological collapse...
...Throughout the 1970s, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador were among the world's leading users of DDT and other organochlorines banned in the United States but still produced here for export...
...See Howard Daugherty, et...
...More than 1,000 people receive medical treatment for exposure to pesticides in Guatemala each year...
...5. See U.S.AID-EI Salvador I, Environmental Profile of El Salvador, compiled for U.S.AID by Steven Hilty (Tucson: Arid Lands Information Center, University of Arizona, 1982), pp...
...Added to the burden of long hours, back-breaking work and some of the lowest wages in Latin America is the familiar roar of crop duster planes flying overhead, symbol of the worst toxic threat to the environment and people: pesticides...
...Central America was producing over a million bales annually, which ranked the region third in sales on the world market, behind the United States and Egypt...
...See Sean L. Swezey, Douglas L. Murray, and Rainer G. Daxyl, "Nicaragua's Revolution in Pesticide Policy," Environment, Vol...
...A 1977 United Nations report on Nicaragua estimated that insecticidecaused environmental and social damage had a total yearly economic cost of $200 million, while foreign exchange earned from cotton amounted to a maximum of $141 million...
...However, organochlorines such as DDT do not...
...Today, the protective canopy of dense forests isgone...
...Thesis in Environmental Studies, Ottawa: York University, 1978), p. 77...
...2 The cultivation methods utilized also worked against soil conservation...
...There, pristine coastal mangroves and vast tracts of virgin dry and moist tropical forests, interspersed with open grassland, flourished among isolated cattle haciendas and the plots of their resident tenant families...
...64-190...
...and L6pez Zepeda, The Ecological Impact, p. 44...
...As such, the ecological crisis cotton has wrought in Central America is the logical outcome of 500 years of imperialist domination over the people and environment of Latin America...
...Agency for International Development (AID), World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), as well as the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization-the forests of the Pacific lowlands were "opened up" for development during the 1950s, and later underthe Alliance forProgress...
...See Robert G. Williams, Export Agriculture and the Crisis in Central America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1986...
...8 Excluded peasant farmers often moved onto unfertile land ecologically unsuitable for slash-andburn (or swidden) agriculture, particularly the steep hillsides of the Pacific mountains and rugged interior highlands, and the nutrient-poor rainforest soils of the CaribWeighing cotton in Nicaragua: The Chamorro government is seeking to double cotton cultivation and lift pesticide bans introduced under the Sandinista government bean lowlands...
...and J. Millington, The Effect of Land-Use Changes in Central America on the Population of Some Migratory Bird Species (Washington, D.C.: The Nature Conservancy, 1984...
...Guarded by a long chain of majestic volcanos and the steep slopes of the western highlands, the hot, dry climate and rich volcanic soils of the Pacific coastal plain extending from Mexico down through Panama were ideal for growing the puffy white balls...
...For a discussion of the ecological impact of non-traditional crops in Guatemala, see Gardner, Guatemala: A Political Ecology, pp...
...due to pesticide contamination...
...See Browning, El Salvador, p. 234...
...And Sergio tells me: "The smell of Nicaragua...
...NUMBER 2 (SEPTEMBER 1991)31 Daniel Faber teaches sociology at Northeastern University and is a co-founding editor ofCapitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Journal of Socialist Ecology...
...In 1954, a Salvadoran government study on soil conservation recommended that 50% of the national area under subsistence cultivation be returned to forest in order to avoid excessive use and erosion of the soil...
...cited in Florence Gardner, with Yaakov Garb and Marta Williams, "Guatemala: A Political Ecology," Green Paper No.5 (San Francisco: EPOCA, Oct...
...In addition to massive fish, lobster, and shrimp kills, thousands of hectares of former banana lands have been rendered irreversibly damaged by excessive chemical contamination...
...Spurred by a number of international agencies-U.S...
...And now at last the beach at Poneloya and the plane coming in to land the string of foam along the coast gleaming in the moonlight...
...The all-weather highway system, malaria eradications programs, ports and warehouses, etc., not only unlocked this potential, but also raised land values (differential rent II, or increased land values stemming from investments of labor into the land...
...3 1 The pesticide treadmill has also reappeared in the wave of non-traditional crops currently being promoted in the region by AID...
...The capitalization of the Pacific lowlands was seldom accompanied by land conservation investments in soil cover, drainage systems, wind barriers, etc...
...Of the chemicals applied by crop dusters, 50% to 75% never reach the target crop...
...4. During the 1950-1960s, the high differential rent potential of the Pacific littoral created a frenzy of land speculation, hence deforestation as a means of claiming title...
...The U.S...
...See Lori Ann Thrupp, "The Political Ecology and Pesticide Use in Developing Countries: Dilemmas in the Banana Sector of Costa Rica," (Ph.D...
...By the late 1960s, increasing pest resistance compelled growers to use over 70 chemicals (or chemical cocktails) 28 to 35 times a year...
...and Ruth Norris, Pills, Pesticides, and Profits (New York: North River Press, 1982), p. 2 7. 33...
...In 1983, a CIA-coordinated attack on the port at Corinto destroyed $7 million of organophosphate pesticide just unloaded on the docks...
...Of the many export commodities produced in Central America, cotton is the most ecologically destructive, VOLUME xxv...
...Numerous other mammals of the deciduous forest were also exterminated or greatly reduced, including the nine-banded armadillo, agouti, coyote, grey fox, badger, puma, and white-tailed deer, as well as large birds such as the ornate hawk-eagle, scarlet macaw, yellow-headed parrot, Muscovy duck, crested guan, and great curassow...
...In Guatemala, pesticides have blown from lowland areas up mountainsides, killing the bark beetle's natural predators and causing the worst beetle attack in that country's recorded history...
...Growers also dramatically increased applications of older insecticides (often in combination with newer varieties) at much higher doses and much shorter intervals...
...2 ' In 1975 alone, tiny El Salvador consumed 20% of the world's entire parathion production-an average of 4.5 pounds of this deadly chemical for each acre of cropland in the country, or 2,400 pounds of insecticides for every square mile of cotton land...
...Coastal savannas, evergreen forests, and large areas of coastal mangroves were also cleared in the onslaught...
...New, more toxic insecticides such as endrin, dieldrin, and lindane, many of which were restricted or banned in their country of origin, brought cotton back a few years later...
...UPI and AP wire stories, March 1988...
...2 5 Airborne pesticide residues from the cotton fields of Central America have even been found as far away as Michigan...
...The return of the cotton plantation will undoubtedly mean a renewed dependency on foreign loans and the consolidation of anew economic elite...
...Although highly toxic organophosphates cause an estimated 80% of Central America's acute pesticide poisonings, this family of pesticides breaks down rather quickly once released into the environment...
...Many growers were tenant speculators operating on short-term credit...
...In fact, just the opposite was the case...
...By the mid-1960s and through the 1970s, a whopping 40% of all U.S...
...11, No.3 (1981), p. 123...
...2. Cited in David Browning, El Salvador: Landscape and Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 2 2 7-8...
...In Guatemala, cotton acreage has plunged by nearly 78% since the late 1970s...
...246-247...
...See Joshua Karliner, "The Ecological Destabilization of Central America," World Policy Journal (Fall 1989), pp...
...2 3 ROWNING THE PACIFIC COASTAL PLAINS in a sea of poison led to the long-term contamination of the land surface, water table, and food chain...
...Dissertation, Univ...
...See Swezey, et...
...4 (1983), pp...
...See Daugherty, et...
...One traveler through the Pacific lowlands of El Salvador in the early twentieth century remarked how he rode, "mile upon mile through magnificent timber-tree lands," where stands of ebony, cedar, mahogany and granadilla stood "so close together that daylight seldom enters, and sunlight never...
...In other words, systems which promoted the efficient circulation of capital and labor raised the financial value of the land, which in turn resulted in the destruction of the lowland habitats...
...2 6 Wildlife is suffering the brunt of this ecological assault, as deforestation and chemical drenchings disrupt animal reproduction and kill off prey for birds...
...6 Peasants were evicted from their traditional landholdings, often by brutal military force...
...al., Ecodevelopment, p. 39...
...In 1987 more than 50 children died of pesticide poisoning in just one San Salvador city hospital...
...13, No...
...Pesticide use itself thus leads to its own propagation: ever greater quantities, at higher toxicity, and in greater frequency...
...As one study points out, there were "seldom regulatory clauses in the contract against maltreatment of the land, or payments to the tenant for improvements made by him...
...Since land reform was politically impossible, the report suggested making the fertile coastal lowlands accessible to the peasantry...
...Thesis, Ontario, Canada: York University, 1977), pp...
...See Leonard, Natural Resources, pp...
...The German multinational Bayer tested methyl parathion, a derivative of a nerve gas developed by the Nazis during World War II, in the area around Le6n...
...However, the crisis was only temporary...
...See Georgeanne Chapin and Robert Wasserstrom, "Pesticide Use and Malaria Resurgence in Central America and India," The Ecologist, Vol...
...These favorable ecological conditions of production (in Marxist economic terms, differential rent I) were not accessible because of inadequate infrastructure...
...But most lamentably, it would return Nicaragua to thepesticide treadmill and the ecological disas- ter that implies DF natural balance that would keep them in check...
...32-34...
...and Jeffrey Leonard, Natural Resources and Economic Development in Central America: A Regional Environmental Profile (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1987), p. 145...
...7 From that time on pesticide use expanded exponentially...
...A Sea of Poison 1. From Ernesto Cardenal, "Lights," in Zero Hour and Other Documentary Poems (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1980), an account of his return from exile in Costa Rica on the eve of the July 19, 1979 revolution...
...In the region's coastal bays and estuaries along the cotton belt, massive fish kills occur twice a year...
...and U.S.AIDGuatemala I, Draft Environmental Profile on Guatemala (Athens: Institute of Ecology, University of Georgia, May 1981), p. 2 4 . 21...
...Chemicals such as DDT also permeate food and water sources...
...In the Gulf of Fonseca, shared by El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, high levels of DDT and organophosphates are reported in fish and shrimp, a leading export...
...See also, Shelley A. Hearne, Harvest of Unknowns: Pesticide Contamination in Imported Foods (New York: Natural Resources Defense Council, 1984), p. 21...
...pesticide exports went to Central America, making the region the world's highest per capita consumer of pesticides.' 8 Although less toxic than organophosphate pesticides, which break down relatively quickly once introduced into the environment, organochlorines such as methyl parathion, DDT, heptachlor, and chlordane posed a particular threat...
...and Daniel Faber, et al, "Central America...
...8. See Leo Caltagirone, Merlin Allen, Walter Kaiser, Jr., and Joseph Orsenigo, The Crop Protection Situation in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Guyana, prepared by AID, (University of California at Berkeley, 1972), p. 13...
...See ICAITI, An Environmental and Ecological Study, pp...
...5-19...
...9. See Monica Ewert, "Human Impact on the Aquatic Ecosystem ofthe Rio Lempa, El Salvador," (M.A...
...2 4 Some planes empty their tanks at the end of the day by dumping "excess" pesticides in lakes and bays...
...Meanwhile, pesticide use led to the emergence of increasingly resistant pests...
...4 Virtually all of the remaining humid hardwood forests were destroyed, including stands of old-growth ebony, cedar, mahogany, and passionflower (granadilla), quebrado, laurel, balsam, olive, andjiote...
...The government instead promoted the capitalization of the coast by large-scale estates owned by the oligarchy...
...The Food and Drug Administration reports that in 1989, 45 shipments of cantaloupe and snow peas from Guatemala were rejected for entry into the U.S...
...A smell of insecticide...
...Introduced at the end of World War II, cotton was part of a larger scheme promoted by the United States to modernize, diversify, and expand export-agriculture in the region...
...Average DDT levels in cow's milk in Guatemala are 90 times higher than allowed by U.S...
...3 Ancient forests, wildlife habitats, and peasant communities alike were "cleared" to make way for the roads and fields...
...55-57...
...812-815...
...standards.2 Scientists are worried that pesticide contamination in the 9,000 square kilometers of mangrove forests on Central America' s Pacific coast is causing a decline in fish catches...
Vol. 25 • August 1991 • No. 2
