[Protection of mangroves in Venezuela and its impact on environment management: retrospective]

In Venezuela, the law protects mangroves specifically. This paper is a retrospective review of the existing regulations on mangrove to find out: how has it been protected?; which have been the results of different approaches followed to do so?; which could be the problems for its protection in the near future? The result from the analysis indicates that regulations should not protect a specific mangrove species. The focal point on the regulation should be the protection of mangrove, as well as the vital relationships between this landscape unit and the existing others. Therefore, decisions of mangrove should be proposed as part of a plan for the basin where it belongs. Intervention on mangrove must be based on expert judgement, due to high uncertainty about the success of corrective or mitigative actions.