Madagascar: stunning wildlife, landscapes, and cultural diversity

WildMadagascar.org highlights Madagascar's stunning wildlife, landscapes, and cultural diversity.

Madagascar is a land like no other. An island roughly the size of Texas or France, Madagascar is home to more than 250,000 species of which 70% are found nowhere else on the globe.

Madagascar News

Wave of arrests as Madagascar shuts down tortoise trafficking network (February 17, 2025) - A crackdown on the illegal trade in Malagasy tortoises has led to a series of recent arrests. - Following the arrest of a Tanzanian national with 800 tortoises in December 2024, officials said a major investigation had uncovered a major international trafficking network that led to the arrests of more than 20 people in Madagascar and Tanzania. - Wildlife trade monitoring watchdog TRAFFIC says more than 30,000 trafficked radiated tortoises were seized between 2000 and 2021; the critically endangered Malagasy tortoises are in demand internationally. How tortoise conservationist Hery Razafimamonjiraibe manages risks to antipoaching teams (January 10, 2025) - Environmental defenders in Madagascar have faced a spate of threats and attacks in recent years, overshadowing their work to protect biodiversity and human rights. - Against this backdrop, tortoise conservationist Hery Razafimamonjiraibe spoke with Mongabay about how his team manages threats working in often isolated conditions in the south of the country. - Antipoaching work is risky, he says, but this can be managed through close collaboration and cohesion between communities, NGOs and law enforcement agencies. Tortoise protection culture prompts efforts to curb trafficking in Madagascar (December 30, 2024) - Community-led antitrafficking networks are proving pivotal in helping authorities intercept poachers targeting critically endangered and endemic tortoises in southern Madagascar’s fast-disappearing spiny forests. - Illegal hunting, both for their meat and to supply the pet trade, has decimated the species’ population in recent decades. - Indigenous people living in the range of the imperiled species are motivated to protect them due to long-standing traditional beliefs that value and respect the tortoises. - But local efforts can’t solve everything; experts urge more action at national and international levels to step up law enforcement, combat systemic corruption, and crack down on the transnational criminal networks orchestrating the trade. Massive tortoise rewilding in Madagascar’s spiny forest strives to save fraught species (December 26, 2024) - Conservationists and villagers in southern Madagascar aim to release 20,000 critically endangered radiated tortoises rescued from the illegal wildlife trade back into their unique spiny forest home. - Radiated tortoise numbers have been decimated due to rampant poaching to supply domestic meat markets and the international pet trade; without action, studies predict the species could go extinct within the next 20 years. - The conservation program has so far rewilded 4,000 individuals into suitably intact forests surrounded by communities with a long-standing cultural affinity for the species. - But with threats in the wild still prevalent, the program also focuses its efforts on habitat protection by supporting locally led antipoaching patrols and helping communities gain control of local forest management. Coral destruction for toilet construction: Interview with a Malagasy fisher (December 20, 2024) - Toamasina, a coastal city in eastern Madagascar, is surrounded by an extensive network of coral reefs that are home to near-threatened species. - For decades, these reefs have been under threat from an unusual activity: The use of coral in the construction of septic tanks. - Mongabay spoke with Abraham Botovao, a boat skipper and the president of a local fishers’ association, who has been closely monitoring this trade and its impact on the local marine environment. - “It frustrates me every time I see them when I’m out fishing, but unfortunately all I can do is watch without being able to do anything,” Botovao said. A port is destroying corals to expand. Can an NGO rescue enough to matter? (December 19, 2024) - The ongoing expansion of the port of Toamasina in eastern Madagascar is set to destroy 25 hectares (62 acres) of coral reefs. - Tany Ifandovana, a Malagasy NGO, removed a small portion of these corals before construction began, and transplanted them to a coral island several kilometers away, as a way to ecologically compensate for the losses, at least in part. - The NGO faces major challenges, including a lack of resources, little support from the port, and locals destroying corals around the island transplant site. - “As an environmentalist, it hurt my heart to know that these corals were just going to be filled in,” Tany Ifandovana’s vice president told Mongabay. “Something had to be done.” In Madagascar, Taniala Regenerative Camp aims to heal deforestation scars (October 3, 2024) - Expanding agriculture by both residents and new migrants threatens the dry forest of Madagascar’s Menabe Antimena Protected Area. - The ongoing deforestation also threatens the livelihoods of communities. - A local association, Taniala Regenerative Camp, uses resilient forest systems as a model to regenerate degraded soil by planting trees alongside crops. - The association supports surrounding communities through training in agroecology and agroforestry, and through additional income earned from intercropping in agroforestry plots. 50 years of data show that Madagascar’s mangroves are making a comeback (August 14, 2024) - A new analysis of satellite imagery dating as far back as 1972 reveals that mangroves in Madagascar are rebounding after decades of deforestation. - The island’s total mangrove cover is down 8% compared with 1972, but a closer look at the data shows that the rate of loss has been declining and even reversed in the last decade. - Between 2009 and 2019, Madagascar’s mangrove cover increased by 5%, with mangrove forests expanding even more in protected areas — showing that conservation efforts are working. - Researchers say that mangroves still face many threats from climate change, deforestation and mining, and that continued engagement with coastal communities is critical to empower those communities to protect the local mangroves that they depend on. Protected areas benefit nature & people, study says — with caveats (July 2, 2024) - A new paper in the journal Current Biology that attempts to track how protected areas (PAs) fare on biodiversity protection and economic growth found that PAs “don’t have a negative impact on local economic growth.” - However, experts say that the encouraging results must be interpreted with abundant caution because the study uses narrow definitions of conservation success and economic development. - The top 10 countries that were most likely to report harmony between the two objectives included five African countries: Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Zambia and South Sudan. - The performance of PAs in key biodiversity areas such as the Amazon and Southeast Asia was also lackluster, but this was in comparison with other areas, said Binbin Li, first author of the study. “It is not at the same level [as other regions], but it is not rare.” Madagascar lemurs, tortoises seized in Thai bust reveal reach of wildlife trafficking (June 28, 2024) - The recent seizure in Thailand of 48 lemurs and more than 1,200 critically endangered tortoises endemic to Madagascar underscores the global scale of wildlife trafficking networks that use Thailand as a transshipment hub. - The operation was aided by intelligence from a joint transnational investigation between Thai law enforcement agencies and international antitrafficking organizations working to dismantle global wildlife trafficking networks spanning Asia, Africa and South America. - Among the confiscated animals were ring-tailed lemurs, common brown lemurs, spider tortoises and radiated tortoises, all of which were suspected to be destined for illegal pet markets in Asia. - While Madagascar authorities are keen to see the animals repatriated, experts caution that the country’s capacity to receive them are woefully lacking, and urge the government to step up law enforcement, combat systemic corruption and boost surveillance in Madagascar’s remote protected areas. ‘Mind-blowing’ new orchid species found in Madagascar forest canopy (March 22, 2024) - Scientists from Madagascar, the U.S. and Europe have described a new orchid species from the forests of central Madagascar, which has a record-breaking long nectar spur relative to its small flower size. - The orchid is pollinated by a species of hawkmoth with a very long tongue, similar to Darwin’s orchid, which was predicted to exist by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the 1800s. - Habitat of the newly described orchid species is threatened deforestation and mining activities, especially from the Ambatovy nickel and cobalt mine nearby, though Ambatovy is funding conservation actions to protect the species. - Madagascar’s unique biodiversity, including many species found nowhere else on Earth, is under serious threat from rapid deforestation driven by agriculture, fires and mining. Madagascar takes key step toward improving transparency of its fisheries (March 7, 2024) - Madagascar recently released its first fisheries transparency report, part of an effort to open up, democratize, and improve the sustainability of its fisheries sector. - The report is a key step in a process defined by the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI), a Seychelles-based nonprofit. - It contains important information on traditional, artisanal and industrial fisheries, a list of the laws and regulations governing the sector, tenure arrangements, and access agreements — including previously undisclosed information. - It also assesses the country’s transparency according to the availability and accessibility of data from six thematic areas as outlined by the FiTI Standard.

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Books

Madagascar, 9th: The Bradt Travel Guide
Madagascar Wildlife, 3rd: A Visitor's Guide
Mammals of Madagascar: A Complete Guide
Madagascar Travel Pack
Birds of the Indian Ocean Islands
Birds of Madagascar: A Photographic Guide
Lonely Planet Madagascar & Comoros
The Natural History of Madagascar
Malagasy-English: Dictionary and Phrasebook
Lords and Lemurs
The Eighth Continent: Life, Death, and Discovery in the Lost World of Madagascar
The Aye-Aye and I : A Rescue Journey to Save One of the World's Most Intriguing Creatures from Extinction
Shadows in the Dawn: The Lemurs of Madagascar