Help Expand Forest Areas for Endangered Lemurs

Thank you for your support and interest in giving more lemurs access to natural forested habitats at the Duke Lemur Center. Thanks to your generous donation, we have raised more than 80% of our goal to complete this project. 

As mentioned, 75% of the 80 acres at the Duke Lemur Center is currently fenced to allow lemurs to safely live in large tracts of forests like their wild Malagasy cousins. This project will provide another 5.8 acres of enclosed forest for our lemurs to live. Because of you, this project is well underway. We have purchased fencing, materials and begun to make the area safe for our lemurs to move into their new forest home once it becomes warm enough for the lemurs to be outside.

Our lemurs typically enjoy 8-9 months in the forests each year. In order to keep our lemurs safe and warm, they must stay inside when it is below 45 degrees. While the lemurs are inside, we have been working quickly to fence and prepare their new forested area.

We plan to release social groups of two lemur species, a group of crowned lemurs and a group of Coquerel’s sifaka. The specific lemur families chosen for the new forested enclosure depend on their conditioning for free-ranging life, their compatibility to one another, their pregnancy status and timing of any expected births.

Please enjoy the photos of our new shiny fence and lemurs in our other forested areas from last season. Once birthing season is complete, the lemur families have been selected and the temperatures increase to allow lemurs to inhabit the forests, we will send new photos of the lemurs leaping in their new forest!

As a last request from our lemurs and keepers, we are so close to affording a new ATV to provide to our keepers to carry food, supplies and equipment to the new forested habitat. Please consider sharing this project with family and friends so the lemurs can have the convenience of a vehicle to transport their supplies.

Links:

• http://lemur.duke.edu