Hilary Lehman
When I saw the UF News Release about the mangroves in Thailand, I thought, "Finally, a piece that catches my interest from the get-go."
So what's interesting about mangroves?
According to the release, Brian Silliman, a UF assistant professor of zoology, recently co-authored a paper in the journal Science studying the relationship between Thailand's shrimp industry and the mangrove forests that are being depleted by the shrimp farms.
What I liked about the news release was that it showed me the potential for how this research was going to affect individuals. You have the classic man vs. nature dilemma: the shrimp farming in Thailand, which must provide thousands of people with jobs, conflicting with the mangrove forests, which protect the coastline from natural disasters such as tsunamis and have other beneficial environmental effects.
The study found that, although shrimp farming has destroyed mangroves in many parts of Asia, that some mangroves can be sacrificed for the shrimp farms with little detrimental effect. Essentially, the problem of shrimp farming and mangrove forests may not require either / or choices.
"The main point of the Science paper is that assumption and its inevitable conclusion are not always right and should be questioned," the release states.
But more than that, I think this study raises points that could be followed up on with the human interest element.
As a journalist, I'd want to know whether the mangroves that have been destroyed by industry will really be restored, and what is involved in the politics of those decisions.
Maybe this problem doesn't require either / or choices. But are the people in charge still going to make those mutually exclusive decisions, even with the evidence that they don't have to choose between industry and the environment? And do the Thais who work at shrimp farming really care whether mangroves are protecting the coastline from a hypothetical tsunami?
Studies like this interest me when I see them on UF's home page because they pretty clearly have the potential to affect real people.
I wonder whether they have that effect in reality.
