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Current measures to protect and conserve seagrasses are nested in the legislative or judicial process. While this legal/judicial model may arrest activity in the short term, we contend that it may not deliver a long-term solution. We propose an alternative model, using insights derived from historical archives and participant observation interviews. People tend to conserve what they cherish and use. With the seagrass biome disappearing around the globe, we suggest one strategy for seagrass conservation lies in historical and ethnobotanical records of seagrass use.
INTRODUCTION
EVEN though the seagrass biome is a valued resource, global threats to the biome are clearly evident. Losses due to activities directly associated with watershed and coastal modification and development are on the rise (Walker and McComb 1992; Short and Wyllie-Echeverria 1996). Pollution, habitat loss, increased water turbidity, damage due to recreational boating and associated facilities, epidemic diseases and unknown processes, some of which might be cyclic and endogenous, have led to seagrass losses. This trend is also visible in other aquatic systems. In fact, in the United States, Torok et al. (1996) and Allen and Feddema (1996) charge that legislation designed to protect freshwater wetlands is not working and Race and Fonseca (1996) expose the nationwide failure of compensatory mitigation to replace coastal wetlands lost due to human development. Suggested solutions involve either the strengthening or expansion of regulatory powers (Allen and Feddema 1996; Race and Fonseca 1996; Torok et al 1996).
While we acknowledge that increased regulatory authority may also reduce further losses to the seagrass biome, we submit that this is a shortterm solution and strongly concur with Hardin (1968), that there may not be adequate legal or technological solutions to avoid the destruction of natural systems. Our ethnobotanical studies, however, lead us to disagree with Hardin's claim that resources held in common trust are in jeopardy. In contrast, we argue that a management model stimulated by historical and cultural practices of plant use may be the most powerful tool to conserve and protect the seagrass biome.
Balick and Cox (1996) employ the term "salvage ethnobotany" to describe the technique of recovering plant use knowledge that is in danger of being lost (P. 201). The primary objective of this work is linked, but not limited, to...