Madagascar has suffered environmental degradation over a significant part of its land mass. Forests that once blanketed the eastern third of the island have now been degraded, fragmented, and converted to scrub land. Spiny forests in the south are rapidly giving way to "cactus scrub" as indigenous vegetation is cut and burned for subsistence charcoal production. Viewed from above, Madagascar's rivers look as if they are bleeding the country to death as soil is eroded away from the central highlands. Each year as much as a third of the country burns and 1 percent of its remaining forests are leveled.
This ecological decline has not been ignored. Environmental regulations have been in place since Queen Ranavalona II first banned slash-and-burn agriculture in 1881. The French-supported rulers followed their own edicts which aimed to protect wildlife and conserve forests. Nonetheless, these efforts met mixed results. On one hand there is still forest in Madagascar—forest that houses thousands of endemic species from lemurs to baobabs to Uroplatus geckos. On the other hand, the amount of forest today is less than at any time since Madagascar was first inhabited by humans less than 2,000 years ago.
At present, more dollars are pouring into conservation efforts in Madagascar than any other part of Africa. What can be done to ensure that this time around conservation will be a success in Madagascar?
Almost all pictures on this site were taken with a Konica Minolta
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UNESCO lists rainforest parks of Madagascar as Heritage sites (7/2/2007) UNESCO has listed six rainforest parks in Madagascar as World Heritage sites. The announcement comes as the Indian Ocean island nation has moved aggressively to protect its biologically-rich forests from further degradation.
Conservation is saving lemurs and helping people in Madagascar (5/7/2007) Madagascar, an island nation that lies off the coast of southeastern Africa, has long been famous for its unique and diverse species of wildlife, especially lemurs--primates found nowhere else on the planet. In recent years, the island country has also become world-renowned for conservation efforts that are succeeding in spite of extraordinary pressures from a poor population that relies heavily on forest burning for basic subsistence. A large part of this success is due to the early efforts of Patricia Wright, a primatologist who has been working in the country for more than 20 years. Wright led the effort to launch the country's leading protected area and helped Madagascar become a leading global example of conservation despite its economic adversity.
