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.

Geography: Madagascar can be divided into five geographical regions: the east coast, the Tsaratanana Massif, the central highlands, the west coast, and the southwest. The highest elevations parallel the east coast, whereas the land slopes more gradually to the west coast. Geography of Madagascar

Culture: are of the past; where in many areas taboo and tradition takes precedence over the law; and western-style religion is freely mixed with beliefs in sorcery and unparalleled funerary customs. The People of Madagascar

Plant biodiversity: Madagascar is home to as many as 12,000 plant species -- 70-80% of which are endemic -- making it one of the most diverse floras on the planet. Flora of Madagascar.

Animal biodiversity: Madagascar has some of the highest biodiversity on the planet. Of roughly 200,000 known species found on Madagascar, about 150,000 are endemic. Unique to the island are more than 50 types of lemurs, 99 percent of its frog species, and 36 genera of birds. Madagascar houses 100 percent of the world's lemurs, half of its chameleon species, 6 percent of its frogs, and none of its toads. Some species found in Madagascar have their closest relatives not in Africa but in the South Pacific and South America. Wildlife of Madagascar.

Madagascar News

Madagascar highway pushes on through controversy (March 31, 2025) - More than a hundred Malagasy civil society organizations have called on the government to halt construction of a major highway after thousands of farmers were affected by unusual flooding linked to the project. - They are calling for compensation for affected communities and inclusive consultations before the project continues. - The highway, intended to link the capital Antananrivo to the port of Toamasina, has also been criticized for threatening ecologically important forests and a significant heritage site. Devastating flood forces relocation of 10,000 tortoises at Madagascar sanctuary (March 26, 2025) - In January, a rehabilitation center for critically endangered tortoises in southern Madagascar was severely impacted by heavy flooding caused by two cyclones. - The rescue center hosts thousands of tortoises rescued from traffckers; the flooding killed more than 800 of them. - Temporary solutions have been put in place to care for the now twice-rescued animals, as reconstruction will not be possible until later this year. - This is the first time the conservation center has faced disruption on this scale since it was launched in 2017. Re:wild and Age of Union announce conservation partnership (March 13, 2025) - The nonprofits Re:wild and Age of Union announced a new partnership to scale up their conservation efforts to focus on protecting critical ecosystems and developing creative projects like documentaries and art installations. - Their first collaboration will be a million-dollar restoration project in Madagascar, where 90% of original forest cover has been destroyed by slash-and-burn agriculture and the overexploitation of natural resources. - Leaders of both organizations said partnerships like this will be the key to scaling up conservation efforts and have a lasting impact on local communities. Chanel wanted ‘responsible’ gold. It turned to a protected area in Madagascar (February 21, 2025) - In 2019, French fashion house Chanel sought to obtain responsibly sourced gold from artisanal miners in Madagascar — who happened to operate inside a protected area that’s home to critically endangered lemurs and other wildlife. - Under the initiative, which eventually fell through, Chanel partnered with Fanamby, the local NGO managing Loky Manambato Protected Area in northern Madagascar, to formalize the operations of some 1,000 miners. - Fanamby has acknowledged that its tolerance for mining in the reserve’s buffer zone “is contrary to conservation,” but added “there is an arrangement” allowing this as long as the core area is left protected. - Conservation experts say Chanel’s approach — exploiting the fact that many supposedly protected areas aren’t very strictly protected at all — highlights weaknesses in the current conservation paradigm that will only grow more apparent as governments seek to designate more protected areas. 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.

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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