Initiative immerses kids in Earth’s largest mangrove forest
Ajuru, turu, and caranguejo-uçá are fruit and animal species vital to the food culture and economy of the world’s largest continuous stretch of mangrove forest. They play such a big part in the daily lives of the people of the Amazon town of Bragança that visitors are often invited for a turu mollusc broth, or to pick ajuru, a sweet pink fruit, on the beach.
Located in the Salgado region, in the northeast of Pará state, North Brazil, the town also stands by the shores of the Atlantic ocean. The unique landscape brings together forest and marine life in the form of a mangrove swamp stretching from the coast of Pará to that of the neighboring Maranhão—a staggering 679 kilometers, the planet’s longest unbroken extension of this ecosystem.
Marcus Fernandes, coordinator at the Laboratory of Mangrove Ecology at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), said the abundant presence of this coastal ecosystem makes Brazil the country with the world’s second largest mangrove area, behind Indonesia. The Amazon coast—which includes the states of Amapá, Pará, and Maranhão—covers over 80 percent of such areas. “It’s an extremely distinctive region, because it boasts a large freshwater hydrographic basin, which makes it rather different from the other mangrove swamps along the Brazilian coast,” he noted.
According to Fernandes, the large volume of fresh water carries sediments and nutrients that make this ecosystem unique in North Brazil.
“We have high connectivity with different systems here. Connectivity both with coral reefs—the Amazon corals discovered in the 1970s—connectivity with a whole other type of forest, with new ecosystems, such as tidal floodplains, igapós [blackwater-flooded forests], terra firme [upland forests], restingas, and other forested systems that are also so extremely rich, both in terms of fauna and flora,” he pointed out.
An immersive experience
Even though Brazil ranks among the 15 nations with the largest coastal zones in the world and has more than half of its population (54.8%) living on the coast, visiting a mangrove swamp is still an adventure only a few people get to experience. At 17, Maria Eduarda Mendes lives on the coast and grew up seeing the sea from Bragança. Throughout her childhood, however, she only knew about mangroves from the stories her grandfather and uncle, both fishermen, used to tell her.
In 2024, during her first year of high school, she joined the Escola Vai ao Mangue (“The School Goes to the Mangrove Swamp”) initiative, an environmental education project promoted by the nonprofit Peabiru Institute. By learning about the brackish-water ecosystem and its unique biodiversity, Maria Eduarda was able to feel the texture of the mud, see the long roots of the vegetation, and find out more about the animals she remembered from the stories.
“I told everyone back home how much fun it was, how bad I want to experience it more and more,” she said.
Project Coordinator Madson Galvão said the initiative is part of a larger education program dubbed Mangues da Amazônia (“Mangrove Swamps of the Amazon”), which was joined by some 2 thousand students and 300 teachers from 29 schools and two higher education institutions in 2024 alone.
“Many of these students see the Amazon only as a dry-land forest. But we have a region with other features—the coastal Amazon, where both the mangrove ecosystem and the maritime ecosystem are found. So when they arrive in this part of the Amazon, they see the connection between our rivers, the forest, the mangrove swamps, and the sea,” Galvão mentioned.
In Marcus Fernandes’ opinion, the open-air classes are hands-on scientific experiences that raise kids’ awareness about the importance of mangrove swamps in protecting the coastal zone, local people’s food security, and their ability to store carbon and protect the planet from climate change. “The mangrove swamp has a higher stock capacity than dry land—two to three times more. This plays a key role in the environmental balance,” he pointed out.
Students are introduced to the species as they interact with the ecosystem. “We teach them how to identify the three most dominant ones: Rhizophora mangle, the red mangrove; Avicennia schaueriana, the black mangrove; and Laguncularia racemosa, the white mangrove. So we work on their association with the sediment, and from there we get into the fauna, because it’s in the red mangrove—with its muddier soil and easier-to-build galleries and burrows—that crabs have a greater associated distribution,” the project coordinator noted.
In addition to learning about the distribution of mangroves in the Amazon and the fauna and flora in this ecosystem, the students make their own contribution by planting seedlings in degraded mangrove areas.
“It’s incredible to know that we’ve planted new things in the mangrove swamp. In the furture, when I go there again, to go to the beach, for example, I’ll see how much it’ll have grown,” Maria Eduarda said.
Based on environmental education initiatives, the program has recovered 16 hectares of mangrove forest in the Amazon, where specialists monitor the return of the crabs and study the genetic variability of the species in order to identify more resistant seeds that could guarantee greater success in future reforestation efforts.
The interaction with fishermen and extractivists adds to the experience of traditional knowledge, economics, and regional food culture. “It’s an activity that brings in interdisciplinary learning, because it’s a lot of subjects we deal with in there—science, geography, local culture. We deal a lot with knowledge about the relationship between the environment and people and society,” Fernandes concluded saying.
Expansion
In 2025, when Pará is slated to host the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém in November, the project’s organizers hope to expand capacity and reach even more students. They plan to submit environmental education proposals to the 1st International Children and Youth Conference on Education and Climate Change, a meeting to be held in preparation for COP30, which will also take place in the capital of Pará, from March 7 to 21.
