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Magical Makira

March 2, 2016

4 amazing aspects of the massive park in Madagascar.

Photo Credit: Julie Larsen Maher © WCS

Madagascar's Makira Natural Park is a very unique landscape on a very unique island.

Around 90% of Madagascar's biodiversity is found nowhere else in the world. Makira hosts a great deal of it, including 20 species of lemur (the highest count of any local protected area).

Check out some other impressive things about the park and a simple way you can help it (explained below).

Photo Credit: ©Asia Murphy

1. It's home to the silky sifaka

These all-white, whistling lemurs are rare. We're talking only a few hundred left in the wild. And they're only found in two protected areas, including Makira.

There are other critically endangered species here, too, like the red-ruffed lemur, the indri, and the black and white ruffed lemur.

Photo Credit: Julie Larsen Maher © WCS

2. It's home to many, many plants

Makira houses about 50 percent of the floral biodiversity of all of Madagascar. Not to mention animals, like this Madagascar day gecko.

Photo Credit: Julie Larsen Maher © WCS

3. It's big

The biggest in Madadascar. The protected area itself covers about 919,000 acres (372,000 ha), making it about 40 times the size of Manhattan. And that doesn't even include the surrounding area, which features nearly as much ground in community-managed forests.

Photo Credit: Julie Larsen Maher © WCS

4. It gets great local support

WCS oversees the protected area itself on behalf of the government and we collaborate closely with 70 or so community associations (comprising 48,000 people) who manage the surrounding area.

They're involved in a range of conservation activities, including patrols, ecological monitoring, firebreak maintenance, and marking Makira's limits.


You can help support Makira, including two critically endangered lemur species, by voting for it on the European Outdoor Conservation Association's website before March 15. With your support, a WCS-aided project there could win $33,000 of invaluable funding.

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