Salt is precious in poverty-stricken coastal West Africa, but conservation experts say efforts to extract it are laying waste to mangrove swamps, causing erosion and ravaging fish stocks.
In Sierra Leone, one of Africa’s poorest nations still recovering from a 1991-2002 civil war, lawmakers are preparing a bill to join a seven-nation charter to protect the region’s mangrove forests.
Environmental groups are trying to encourage salt producers to use other methods of extracting the salt, including solar drying, to reduce the strain on mangroves.
(READ More at Reuters)