This blog post was written by Paul Butler.  Mr. Butler led Rare’s first Pride campaign in the late 1970′s to save the endangered St. Lucian parrot and continues his conservation leadership today as Rare’s Senior Vice President, Global Programs.

In March 2010, I joined a team from Rare to visit Blue Venture’s Rare Pride campaign site at Andavadoaka in Madagascar. Roughly the size of Texas or France, Madagascar is the fourth-largest island in the world.  It is home to 19 million people and an astonishing 5 percent of the planet’s plant and animal species (250,000) of which — because of its 80 million years of isolation – 80 percent are to be found nowhere else. Although, I should add, you will not find the Penguins, Giraffe, and Zebra depicted in the Disney movie of the same name.

Biologically, Madagascar is perhaps best known for its Lemurs. Wild Madagascar describes these primates as looking “something like a cat crossed with a squirrel and a dog;” adding that the island is home “to nearly 60 ‘taxa’ (species, sub-species, and populations from 33 species across five families and 14 genera), ranging in size from the 25-gram Pygmy Mouse Lemur to the Indri. All these species are endemic to Madagascar (two lemur species were introduced to the Comoros) giving the country the second highest number of primate species after Brazil, which has 77 species (only two endemic genera and no endemic families). And new species are still being discovered.”

Madagascar was once covered almost completely by forests, but the practice of “tavi” — burning the woods to clear the land for dry rice and other forms of cultivation — has denuded most of the landscape. Today, forests are restricted to the hillsides aligned along a north-south axis bordering the island’s east coast, from the Tsaratamana Massif in the north to Tolagnaro in the south. Forests continue to be threatened by both tavi and deforestation for fuelwood (wood and charcoal from these forests are used to meet 80 percent of domestic fuel needs). We saw extensive evidence of the denudation that has taken place as we flew into the Capital “Tana” and from there to the Provincial Capital of Tulear, as well as elsewhere in our travels.

But Madagascar’s spectacular biodiversity is not limited to its terrestrial biomes. In the tropical seas off its south-west coast lies the fourth largest coral reef in the world  — the Grand Récif de Tuléar.  Among the inhabitants of Madagascar’s marine environment are 34 species of cetaceans, five species of marine turtles, 56 shark species, 300 types of hard corals, and 1,300 kinds of bony fish.  As with the island’s forests, Madagascar’s marine ecosystems are threatened too.  The Wildlife Conservation Society lists the following as some of the more critical threats:

• Uncontrolled industrial fishing, especially by illegal unlicensed, unregulated vessels (IUUs)
• Industrial trawling, especially on shallow continental shelf seas and sea mounts
• Degradation of coral reefs through overfishing, climate change effects, and sedimentation
• Hunting or incidental capture of large marine fauna (dugong, dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, and sawfish)
• Local extirpation of high-value species, such as sea cucumbers
• Conflicts between resource users over access to resources
• Insufficient protection for marine environment (MPAs, no-take zones)
• Insufficient capacity and information management

Our brief visit to the island took us to meet with an innovative organization doing cutting-edge community development and marine research at the very center of the Grand Récif de Tuléar.  The organization is Blue Ventures, and it is with this organization that Rare is partnering to launch its first Pride campaign in Madagascar. Blue Ventures “is an award-winning marine conservation organization dedicated to conservation, education, and sustainable development in tropical coastal communities. Through its “marine-expeditions,” volunteers from around the world join local staff on career breaks, student gap years and internships, where they working closely with its field research teams, in partnership with local communities.”

Blue Ventures certainly works in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, but it is not easy to reach! Our team gathered from the U.S. and Europe in Tana where we spent several days in meetings before heading via Air Madagascar to Tulear.

The drive from this provincial capital to the actual campaign site was spectacular. Ten long hours in a 4WD along what is described as a road, but in reality is a narrow sand track. We passed through the Spiny Forest, where an astonishing 95 percent of all plant species are endemic and saw splendid examples of the island’s famed Baobabs, before reaching Andavadoaka, where Dale Galvin, Daniel Hayden, Annalisa Bianchessi and I spent few days looking at the progress being made with the Pride campaign at that site. The coastal scenery and views from our humble accommodation were incredible.

That night after being introduced to the campaign team (more in my next blog) we slept under the most amazing stars. My next post will deal with an audit of the campaign.

Related posts:

1. Notes from a RarePlanet: Could biodiverse Madagascar become like Haiti? This photo of Madagascar comes courtesy of Flickr user Francesco...
2. Notes from a rare planet: Death of coral reefs could devastate nations This photo of coral reef comes courtesy of Flickr user...