By Martina Petru | Project Coordinator
The last three months of spring in SW Madagascar just flew by! Ho Avy has been extremely busy in Ranobe. Truly interesting and exciting times!
In focus of our activities has been the Ho Avy community protected no harvest forest reserve, as well as community and organizational partnerships. The reserve got delineated during the Ranobe protected area zoning meeting in early October, in which WWF, Ho Avy, FIMPAHARA and members of the Ranobe community took part, sparking a great momentum of community engagement. After the zoning meeting several members of the community, previously not engaged in Ho Avy’s activities approached Ho Avy and expressed their interest to join Ho Avy to safeguard and actively patrol the forest.
That has been an important step, strengthening Ho Avy’s capacity building efforts and local partnerships in the Ranobe region while gaining essential local support to reach our conservation goals. The growing community engagement became effective immediately, having a chance of responding to an extensive fire that happened in the Ranobe forest in late October. The fire was started by new immigrants to the area, who cleared the forest so they are able to locate and collect the babo (wild yams that grow in the forest) and consequently cultivate crops. Ho Avy went with the members of the community and FIMPAHARA to the forest and got on hold of the fire initiators, who were taken to Toliara to the forest protection enforcing Forest Service.
Shortly after, on November 3, Ho Avy was asked to fly with Avion Sans Frontiers and WWF to confirm and assess the area burned by the forest fire. The flight has provided invaluable insights and helped Ho Avy to assess and plan the upcoming agriculture, ecotourism, and reforestation projects, all of which have tremendous potential as trade-offs to locals for reducing pressure on the forest.
In between extensive time spent in the forest, preparation works on the community center in the Ranobe village have taken place. A fence was build as an essential pre-requisite to the center building and tree planting serving as goat barrier. The community members participated in designing and locating the community center buildings and have been going to gathering materials, including poles of local bamboo growing just about 30 km north of Ranobe.
Commencing with the New Year, the construction of the community center wouldn’t be possible without your continuous support. We keep raising funds to keep our program growing, striving towards our high conservation and sustainability goals.
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