way to Spaniards’ wholesale destruction of the oyster beds with dredges. The Spanish crown intervened to try to prevent further destruction, banning dredges and attempting to keep the oyster fisheries sustainable. Unknown to them was the environmental conditions that pearl oysters needed for produce their treasure – proper salinity and temperature of the water and the optimal type of sea bottom. But the unsophisticated harvesting of pearls clearly destroyed the oyster beds’ sustainability. The search for a high value export product also resulted in Spaniards introducing cane sugar cultivation and the importation of African slaves as the main labor force. African slaves were forcibly brought in the early the 1500s and sugar plantations were established on the island of Hispaniola (now divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic). The Spanish and Portuguese had established sugar plantations in the Atlantic islands off the African coast, in Madeira, São Tomé, and the Canary Islands. Cane sugar cultivation often necessitated clearing land, but more destructive to forests was the need for wood to fuel the boiling down of cane juice to form moist, but solid sugar suitable for shipping. The cutting of trees was initiated on the island of Hispaniola and later other islands as well. Deforestation had an environmental impact with the expansion of sugar cultivation. Not only were trees felled and areas burned to create fields, but the woodlands beyond the fields were the source for wood for processing raw cane juice into refined sugar that could be exported. Since sugar cane must be processed immediately upon its cutting, the sugar refineries (Portuguese:engenhos, Spanish: trapiches or ingenios) had to be located close to the fields, since cane juice leaked out of cut cane almost immediately. The exhaustion of soils and destruction of forests was not sustainable, but Europeans saw land as being an abundant resource, and therefore not worth conserving. In the Caribbean islands, the limits of wide spread deforestation and soil exhaustion were obvious. Many did not take the long view, since Europeans often moved to what they hoped were more promising regions. This happened in the early Caribbean once the Europeans conquered Aztec and Inca empires. Cane sugar became the main export product from Portuguese Brazil and on Caribbean islands that other European powers seized from Spain. Silver mining and mercury The hopes that Europeans had of finding easily exploitable sources of precious metals were dashed in the Spanish