I have decided to go to Ambodivoangy again with DEnis. Denis trained Jaonary jean and Bernard about how to take care of eggs and new larvae, so right now, Jaonary jean is starting to rear 500 larvae on his tree near the village.

Also Jaonary jean has decided to make his farm as a demonstration site, he will copy Manamby and Maroantsetra, and now he is working on that. He is starting to build a small house for the eggs on his land and he will set up every thing that may interest the visitors. that`s a great idea.

Also I met the mayor of Ambinanitelo in Ambodivoangy and I invited him to visit the TMA`s nursery and also Jaonary jean`s future demonstration site and all of that have been done. Even the mayor will visit Maroatsetra site on this coming week.

Also, one of the purpose of my trip in Ambodivoangy is the meeting with the new farmers, I was so sad about that because they did not work seriously. so a new list of interested farmers will be publish on next week. I tryed to meet a new farmers to replace the person who did not work seriously.

I reveived a news from marie jeanne also, and I heard that she is raising many Larvae on her land and already produced many cocoons, using DEnis`s instructions.

Sincerely,
Mamy

Pictures:

• Joanary Jean's demonstration site (JPG)
• Bertrand and Mario at CPALI House (JPG)

Dear members of the Global Giving

The CPALI team in Madagascar and all the farmer`s associations ( TMA, FTA, ATF, FTM/TM) who work with CPALI want to thank The Global Giving for your funding and support to CPALI program in Maroantsetra- Madagascar.

As a CPALI field director , I want to extend my deepest appreciation for your support . The global giving`s funds allow us to improve the wildsilk production and the forest restoration in the border of Makira protected area. After 3 years work, CPALI is well known in the community, we are in the best position to persuade farmers and link them to the conservation program through the silk production.
Now 50 farmers in the 4 communities of Makira protected area are ready to work with us. Each farmers will plant between 250 to 1000 food plant trees until June 2010.

CPALI malagasy team and the 50 farmers wish merry christmas to all members of the Global giving.

Thank you for your support to this program and best wishes

Mamy,
CPALI field Director.

It is Sunday night and I have only 3 more days in Madagascar. I am in the capital, Antananarivo and I never enjoy the city as much as being in the field – any field. But it has been a useful week as I have had a chance to discuss the CPALI program with colleagues here. CPALI is trying to accomplish a different kind of conservation program than has been tried in the past. In the 90’s there was an effort to introduce various small-scale enterprise programs in developing countries in support of conservation. Unfortunately more than 90% of the programs failed and even among those that did not, none that I know of developed robust markets for the products that were being introduced. Unfortunately, the general public and especially the conservation groups, have not fully analyzed why these programs failed. In my opinion, the direct cause of those failures was that the individuals implementing the programs did not develop sustainable markets and an infra-structure to support them.

CPALI has been working to develop a market for wild silk since before we even began our fieldwork. Despite our efforts and an innovative marketing plan, and the fact that we have identified some buyers, we are not there yet. If we are to realize our dream of establishing a robust, Malagasy, conservation enterprise that can support Madagascar’s unique biological habitats, we will need to work closely with other conservation organizations to do so. The enterprise requires geographic and economic scale to be profitable and to be effective in saving the fragile habitats we have targeted. Achieving that scale requires a unified effort across the island. We hope that other groups will replicate our program and will work together to continue to build the markets that we have started to identify. My conversations with others during the past week have focused on updating the conservation and development community about just those issues.

When I return to the States I will continue to advocate this approach and prepare for my return to Madagascar, currently scheduled to coincide with the Spring harvest of the second crop of cocoons. Mamy Ratsimbazafy, our project manager, has participated in all of the conversations this past week and I am very glad to have his continued supervision of the project in the coming months. He believes that he can enlist 20 more farmers by the end of the year, bringing our total to about 50 (from 5 in January, 2009). It is important to note that all of the farmers have "skin in the game"--they get rewarded for results when we buy their output, not merely for participation during the training and site visits.

Dr. Chris Holmes, technical advisor to WCS came by to see the team and our workshop. He was pretty impressed and began snapping pictures. The team smiled obligingly. I had a long talk with Chris about where we are trying to go. We are trying to scale-up the project in support of the Makira Protected Area. However, we need funds. WCS is the recipient of funds from all major donors to support the Makira Area. Their micro-credit center is working well, which is great news for future farmers who want to borrow funds to expand their silk programs. However WCS’s own efforts to create livelihood programs still need work.

We are trying to work towards a collaboration that will combine CPALI’s approach with WCS’s access to funding.

CPALI ‘s goal is to scale up to 500 farmers by the end of 2010. Our problem is that we are small, with a very limited paid staff. Hence CPALI needs to grow to help the project scale. We were hoping to receive funds from USAID but because of the political situation, USAID is still precluded from distributing anything but humanitarian aid. A project costing $500,000 is small for a USAID grant but requires extensive logistical support to process. We are between the proverbial rock and a hard place – we need funds to grow and hire staff but we can’t get funds until we grow and have a larger staff!

We will continue to talk with WCS to find a way to better meld our respective resources and approaches.

We will also be approaching, Tany Meva, a Malagasy foundation that is the recipient of funds from the MacArthur Foundation for livelihood programs in Madagascar. Tany Meva contracts out the work to Malagasy NGO. With our recent success, Chris has kindly agreed to call a meeting in Tana of WCS, CPALI and the director of Tany Meva who has always been quite receptive to us but unable to help us directly.

As an added/alternative approach, would be working to establish a Malagasy CPALI – then we could receive funds directly from Tany Meva. Mamy has started the paperwork to make CPALI Madagascar (or some more appropriate name) a reality. We are trying to think of an appropriate and reverent name – we are thinking of Ny Sabaka (our caterpillars), paralleling the name of Ny Tanintsika, the Malagasy organization who makes the textiles sold on the suraka site. We are open to suggestions!

Pictures:

• Our next product--a non-spun textile made from raw silk (JPG)
• Closeup of the non-spun textile (JPG)
• Large piece of silk "paper" made by the Maroantsetra team (JPG)

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I have now been here in the Maroantsetra area where CPALI has its project headquarters for over two weeks. It has been very productive and fun. The team is working well together. During the past week CPALI had its first workshop to train trainers to make textile/paper. As the week progressed, the team worked together to greatly improve on what I had done before coming here. The result is really stunning and I am excited to bring our new pieces home. We are making a silk "paper" with the cocoons that is wonderful for window shades and standing screens.

We have also had a pleasing reception from various conservation organizations in Madagascar. Because our program is working and villagers are coming to us to participate in the project, we are looking good! CPALI shares its learning broadly and is receptive to villager input and suggestions. For example, originally we wanted villagers to plant 1000 trees per farmer. However this seemed to limit the project to only the wealthiest farmers and especially not the ones we most wanted to reach. Now we are happy to have villagers plant as many trees as they would like but we recommend a 200 tree minimum to make the program financially viable for the families. That many trees will allow farmers to produce about 10000 cocoons with earnings up to $80. As a result, about 10 more farmers from Ambodivaogany immediately signed and we expect to have 50 farmers lined up to participate by the end of 2009! This is an order of magnitude increase and we are thrilled. Of course, 50 farmers names on paper saying they are committed is very different from 50 farmers who actually do something but nevertheless, we are greatly pleased.

In case you haven’t gotten the word, CPALI is now featured on the National Geographic’s Action Atlas site. I have been blogging almost daily with a special section for the Leapin’ Lemurs, Mrs. Leslie’s 5th grade class in New Mexico. We have now added a few more classes in Pennsylvania. My goal was to try to give an idea of what it is like trying to implement a conservation program in the field. So far it seems to be going well – If you know of any schools who might want to follow the 5th grade blog as well as comment on other aspects of the discussion, please let them know. The website is given below, click on it then search for "CPALI"

Best wishes,

Cay

Links:

• Search for CPALI's link

Pictures:

• Odette reading the CPALI training manual that Mamy wrote (JPG)
• Silk paper made by the team (JPG)
• Silk paper made by Mario. (JPG)

At the moment, she is traveling from Maroantsetra to Ambodivoangy to visit the first farmers who have contracted to raise silk worms. Cay will be in Madagascar till early November. Her major goals are to hold a workshop to teach the farmers how to fabricate a kind of paper from the cocoons and to introduce the idea of farmer networks--an echelon structure that will allow the more entrepreneurial farmers to enlist their peers to scale the CPALI project to the point that it advances from demonstration to true production.

Today I learned that the CPALI project has been admitted to Global Giving's "Green" list, which gives us greater access to matching funds and corporate visibility. Of course, we are striving to make the project economically self-sufficient and have this year covered about 5% of our operating expenses with silk-derived revenue--small but, hey, it's a start.

Cay is also scouting for new sites that will leverage well with plans of the large conservation organizations who are active in Madagascar. So far, the major effects she has felt from the political situation has been uncertainty about getting export permits for when we want to move production quantities of silk--the officials who would process the requests are themselves uncertain about what the future will bring.

The CPALI project is now listed on the ActionAtlas, a project being produced by the National Geographic Society. It is not yet "live" but you can still see Cay's Blog if you point a browser to
http://actionatlas.org and then search for CPALI. Most of the entries on the blog are directed at fifth graders who are being taught by an old friend of Cay's.

Finally, I invite you to view the great video that Sharon Pieczenik made of Erik Patel's work on the endangered silky sifakas. We hope one day to be able to contribute to preserving the habitat of the "angels of the forest".

Links:

• Great Video about Erik Patel's work on the Silky Sifakas

Dear Colleagues and Friends
The weather is getting hot again in Maroantsetra and that make emerge the chrysalid fastly, so we have many eggs now, Denis is producing a few cocoons now but for us we had trouble again because many of our larvae were dead at stage 4, but we are still continuing to rear larvae in the garden. Many eggs are hatching everyday. Only 30 cocoons have been produced in Maroantsetra during August, and twice in Denis`rearing.

It`s really important to intercrop the talandoha with a taller plants to shade the talandoha because only the larvae in the shade were survived. in opposite , in April only the larvae in an open area were survived so now we have lots of experiences about the rearing.

In Manaby, most of Denis`s trees were shaded so that allow him to produced more than iMaroantsetra. I`ll inform Jaonary Jean about all of that. When the farmers finish to farm 1000 trees, we must sensibilate them to intercrop the trees with a big plant like casava, banana...

Denis is working on the talandoha farming, so He is getting many seedlings and if it`s continuing like that we will be able to provide seedling to all interested farmers. I`ll visit Denis land on Saturday because he had a small problem in his land, An hydroelectric company has been set up in Ivoloina to provide electricity to all the Analanjirofo region, so the equipments pass over Denis land and he must move his house to another place always in his land. Fortunately our talandoha trees are still there , and no
problem for the Cpali project. The advantage for that hydroelectricity is that Manambia may get an electricity and we can move the project to Manambia in the future (but right now , that seems take so long time).

The attached are photos of earrings that CPALI hopes to sell on its website - There are made from comet moth silk. We are making similar earring from suraka silk that we hope will be ready for the Christmas holiday!

Best wishes,
Mamy

Pictures:

• Comet moth recently emerged from cocoon. (JPG)
• Beautiful silk spun by comet moth (JPG)
• Earrings made from comet moth silk (JPG)

This is an exciting time for CPALI! I am in Antananrivo and on Friday will be sending our first crop to Thailand. Thank you to all who have made this a possibility! With this shipment we will have completed the "proof of concept" stage of the project. We now need to expand and continue to appreciate your help and support.

After shipping on Friday, I plan to return to Maroantsetra. The team has been gathering and drying seeds for the host plant, Talandoha and one of our farmers has even begun to gather and prepare his own seeds. The more the farmers take over while using our methods the better.

We will be spending the next month continuing seed collection, tending the trees and reviewing sites for future planting.

Finally, the CPALI annual report has just been posted on the CPALI webpage (http://www.cpali.org/2009_Report/CPALI_Annual_Report_2009.pdf) as well as our facebook page, CPALI Madagascar that is open to all. Please visit.
Veloma!

Links:

• http://ww.cpali.org

Pictures:

• The team preparing the cocoons (JPG)
• Our first shipment (JPG)

Hi
Tomorrow I`ll go to Ambodivoangy with Judicael by WCS boat. I would like to see the farmers activities there, and also we will meet RANOSY justin`s wife (RANOSY Justin died in April and was one of the CPALI 5). The boat will come back on Wednesday

Mario and Bertrand will take care of the house and the rearing. Every morning they collect the eggs and clean all rearing equipments. Now, the main Mario and Bertrand activities are to remove the chrysalid from cocoon and wash the cocoon one by one, dry them, seperate the cocoon according the color. Also we still have a few larvae ready to spin in the house.
After my mission to Ambodivoangy, Mario and Bertrand will continue to collect the larvae in the field.

- Another news, Marie Jeanne found 5 Argema cocoons (without chrysalids) in her land. She found those cocoons on the tree. This discovering show us that Argema exist in Maroantsetra, I do not sure if the tree that she found the cocoon is the Argema`s food-plant, so I need the verify that with Denis.
Setting up the Argema`s cocoon production maybe possible if we arrive to identify the food-plant and now we are working on that. (Argema mittrei feeds on a mature forest tree and produces silk that can be used for many more purposes than suraka - this is an important advance to the program!).

That`s all the news,
thank you very much
Veloma

By Mamy Ratsimbazafy - Local Director
We are working hard and looking forward to the end of the rearing season!! Everyday Bertrand and Mario go to the field to collect larvae that we placed on trees for to feed during the last 3 stages of larval development. We collect the larvae and put them in spinning baskets at CPALI house when they are ready to spin cocoons. The fact that the larvae change color right before spinning makes it easy to know when its time to return home!

We currently have 12 farmers working with in the COBA of Ambodivoangy. Five farmers are already able to begin the transplanting talandoa (larval host plant) they have been tending. Seven more farmers are ready to set-up a new nursery!

During this year, our goals with the farmers are:
- Ro help the first five to transplant 1000 trees each on family farmers and in border forest sites ( this is the minimum number of trees need/farmer)
- To collect enough seeds in July, August and September for all the new farmers and train the them how to care for the talandoa. This year the farmers will germinate their own seedlings and CPALI will give them the seeds (last year the project team germinated all the seeds and gave farmers small seedlings - a big improvement for us over last year!). This year CPALI must have more than 14,000 good seeds to support the new farmers in Ambodivoangy, and 2000 seedlings to complete the missing seedling stock provided to the first five farmers.)
- By the end of 2009, The ultimate goal for the COBA is to have 5000 trees growing in the farmers land and 7000 seedlings in the farmer`s nursery.

Next year, hopefully beginning March 2010, the first five farmers will be able to produce 1kg of cocoons each. It takes one year for one tree to produce enough leaves to feed 5-10 larvae ( this is a new result after our recent rearing experiments in Maroantsetra and Manamby) . The rearing period in Makira begins in March and continues until July.

In Marovovonana, (CPALI's second target COBA) I met 5 farmers also interested in the project but I`m not sure if they are really serious – we will wait and see if they form a cooperative group and contact us.

Tomorrow, I will go to Manamby to assist Denis who has established CPALI's tree nursery and second rearing site.

Thank you for your interest and support!

Pictures:

• CPALI garden before rearing (with Bertrand!) (JPG)
• CPALI garden after rearing (JPG)
• New color for suraka larvae - same species, a new adaptation? W (JPG)

It is currently very rainy in Maroantsetra - good for CPALI and the caterpillars - but not humans! Mario and Bertrand found many stage 5 caterpillars in the field and so far 600 cocoons have been collected from the Maraontsetra rearing site. The team has just located 3 new host plant sites - Vodivohitra, 20 kilometers, and Sahajinja, 30 kilometers from Maroantsetra. The farmers in Ambodivoaghany, the "CPALI 5" are transplanting host plant seedlings into family gardens.
Despite Madagascar's current political difficulties, CPALI is continuing to move ahead.

Pictures:

• Comet moth larvae (JPG)
• Denis' nursery (JPG)
• Comet moth cocoons - waiting for the adults to emerge (JPG)

Thanks to our dedicated staff in Maroantsetra, continued support from WCS, and connectivity via Skype and email, the CPALI project is progressing towards its near term goal of producing 5 kg of silk this season. The volunteer farmers in Ambodivoangy have recently signed contract, pledging to use CPALI methods, with CPALI pledging to purchase their cocoons Our manufacturing and distribution partner, Angoworld has designed new products using sample cocoons.

Links:

• Angoworld is making products from CPALI cocoons