Madagascar
- Baobab Tree in Madagascar Photo
- There are more species of Baobab trees in Madagascar than anywhere else.
- Julie Larsen Maher ©WCS
- Lemurs in Madagascar Photo
- Ring tailed lemurs are part of the unique biodiversity in Madagascar’s spiny forest.
- Julie Larsen Maher ©WCS
- Malagasy Photo
- WCS works with local people to protect their environment.
- Julie Larsen Maher ©WCS
With its extraordinary, yet highly threatened biodiversity, the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar is a global conservation priority. The country encompasses habitats ranging from tropical rainforests to deciduous dry forests, spiny deserts, reefs, islands, sea grass beds, mangrove forests, and estuaries. These ecosystems places a stunning array of wildlife species, many of which are found nowhere else. Unfortunately, poverty and unsustainable resource use are leading to large-scale forest clearing, which in turn leads to the depletion of Madagascar’s biodiversity capital; only a small fraction of the original forest remains, and many charismatic species have become extinct, including the magnificent elephant bird. Until recently, the Malagasy rural population, one of the poorest in the world, had limited land tenure rights, little access to information and minimal support for alternative livelihoods, which has had devastating consequences for both the country’s natural environment and its standard of living.
Once part of the larger Gondwanalad, the island of Madagascar separated from mainland Africa between 100 and 200 million years ago, creating a time capsule of life in the process. Today the island provides sanctuary for plants and animals that have long since disappeared from other parts of the world and continued to evolve uniquely. Four out of five species of plants and animals found there are unique, or endemic, to Madagascar. Among the best-known species are the lemurs, a primitive group of primates.
Fast Facts
- Lemurs, with fox-like faces and opposable thumbs, evolved some 50 to 60 million years ago and were once widespread around the globe. Small numbers of lemurs arrived on the island of Madagascar soon after that, possibly by rafting across the ocean on floating vegetation. Lemurs prospered and evolved to present-day species on Madagascar and its satellite islands. Elsewhere in the world, lemurs were supplanted by the later evolution of more advanced primates – the monkeys.
- There are 93 lemur species in Madagascar currently identified, including the red-ruffed lemur, black-and-white ruffed lemur, indri (the largest), mouse lemurs (the smallest), and silky sifaka (known for its rattling calls to warn of aerial predators).
- Madagascar provides habitat for 283 bird species (more than 100 are endemic), 12,000 vascular plant species (of which more than 90 percent are endemic), more than 300 amphibian species (about 99 percent of which are endemic), 346 reptiles species (of which 90 percent are endemic), and 30 bat species (18 are endemic).
- Fishes found in the Malagasy region’s crater lakes are considered “living fossils” because they belong to the most primitive of catfish, herrings, cichlids, killies, silversides, and their allied species.
- More than half of Madagascar’s floral biodiversity can be found in the Greater Makira/Masoala/Antongil Bay (MaMaBay) landscape, in the northeastern region of the country. Masoala National Park harbors the critically endangered Madagascar serpent eagle, which was until fairly recently believed to be extinct. The forests of MaMabay also abound with chameleons and geckos, as well as several species of butterflies and fish that have only recently been discovered.
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Challenges
The majority of Madagascar’s terrestrial biodiversity is found in its low altitude forests, the same forests that support the livelihoods for a large percentage of the country's population. Forests provide wood, non-timber forest products, and water for the rice-growing rural population, yet only around 15 percent of the land surface remains forested, largely as a result of expanding slash-and-burn agriculture, grazing, and uncontrolled wildfires. Illicit logging of precious hardwoods, mining, and the hunting of lemurs, bats, birds, and the island's main predator the fossa, also pose serious threats to the ecological integrity of this important landscape. Collection of species for the illegal pet trade has also had a major impact on populations, of tortoises and chameleons in particular. The survival of Madagascar’s numerous endemic freshwater fishes is compromised by environmental degradation, overexploitation, and invasive exotic species.
WCS Responds
WCS works throughout Madagascar to ensure the conservation of the island's unique floral and faunal diversity. A key focus of WCS’s work is the MaMaBay landscape that includes more than 10 percent of the country’s remaining rainforests, as well as the largest calving and breeding ground for humpback whales in the Indian Ocean. WCS helps train park managers and educate local communities about protecting forests and marine ecosystems. In the wildlife-rich Makira forest, WCS has pioneered a program to sell the forest’s carbon credits, on behalf of the government of Madagascar, to help raise funds to protect the forest, support the economic wellbeing of local communities, and help fight global climate change. In the Spiny Desert of southern Madagascar, WCS is working in key areas to conserve the radiated tortoise and its habitat. WCS has also participated in a program launched in 1993 to collect live specimens of five threatened endemic fish, with the goal of establishing secure managed populations as insurance against their global extinction.
WCS Projects
The Conservation Cotton Initiative (CCI) promotes the development of
organic, eco-friendly cotton farming around high biodiversity areas.
The program helps to enhance incomes and economic development, improve
resource management, and protect wildlife.
In collaboration with the government of Madagascar, WCS’s Makira Carbon Company will help sell more than nine million tons of carbon offsets to the global market. Proceeds will protect the forest from further destruction, and help enhance the economic wellbeing of neighboring communities.
At Madagascar!, zoogoers see the island nation through the eyes of a conservationist. The Bronx Zoo strives to inspire a connection to Madagascar’s imperiled wild creatures while there is still time to save them.
From the Newsroom
WCS applauds the inclusion of forestry provisions in the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which paves the way to comprehensive climate change policy.
To save Madagascar’s pristine forests and combat climate change, WCS and the government of Madagascar agree to launch a massive carbon sale, totaling more than nine million tons.
WCS researchers create an unprecedented study of the island’s wildlife, plants, and climate, mapping the habitat for 2,315 species to pinpoint the best areas for conservation.
Madagascar’s turtles and tortoises are vanishing, according to WCS and other groups that met recently in Antananarivo. The conservationists will launch new efforts to protect these living treasures.
“Conservation cotton” from Africa is making its way onto the backs of U2 fans across the world, thanks to a partnership between Hard Rock International, T-shirt company edun LIVE, and WCS.