Threatened biodiversity in Madagascar

Madagascar is one of the world’s highest conservation priorities, supporting approximately 5% of global biodiversity. The Anosy region, southeast Madagascar, is renowned for containing some of the few remaining viable littoral forests, supporting unusually rich and diverse plant and animal communities, including 13% of the island’s native flora.

However, the littoral forest faces a variety of challenges. Irregular rainfall and droughts reduce groundwater sources, increasing its vulnerability to fire. A highly impoverished community of 2,600 people depend on the forests for natural resources. Unsustainable logging, fragmentation and degradation continue to endanger the survival of the ecosystem, including one of the world’s most threatened group of mammals, endangered Lemurs.

To overcome these challenges and increase habitat connectivity, the Ala Programme, with the support of local stakeholders, has planted five biological corridors to connect Sainte Luce littoral forest remnants with a larger protected forest fragment. Progress has been made through the monitoring of native seedling survival rate; increasing to between 58% and 74% for seedlings planted in May 2022. The use of camera traps was trialled, aiming to record the presence of lemurs in the Corridors. An image of an Endangered fat-tailed dwarf lemur was captured on the edge of a Corridor.

Since June 2022, Project Ala has focused on bush fire prevention and mitigation, preparing for the upcoming planting season. In four communities, the team conducted training sessions and awareness-raising events, and distributed fire-fighting materials such as fire beaters made from locally-sourced materials. These efforts have contributed towards protecting the SLLF, surveys show the fire beaters are being widely used and that fires are being reported to forest management bodies.  

Thank you again for your continued support, enabling this vital work to be carried out in Southeast Madagascar.

Project Oratsimba: Phase IV is supporting the communities of Sainte Luce and Elodrato in strengthening their Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs); areas of protected ocean that are managed by coastal communities. As part of a range of management measures, both communities have decided to implement a No Take Zone (NTZ), an area of key habitat where – for most of the year – lobster fishing does not take place, giving marine life a chance to recover and regenerate, thus ensuring the security of lobster stock in the region.

The NTZs opened this year in July, and the payoff has been immense.Some fishers were reporting landings as much as five times higher than normal. The president of the Sainte Luce Fisheries Management Committee was particularly proud to see the payoff from this community-elected initiative:

“Because of the NTZ, our life has changed. Before the NTZ, we, were really suffering because there were hardly any lobsters and fish… Even our kids did not go to school anymore as we could not afford the school fees. It has been going very well since the existence of the NTZ. Now, the kids are going back to school in September.”

Before the NTZ, fishers were struggling to catch enough and afford costs, such as school fees, but with management measures in place, this has started to change. A fisher from Elodrato, shared this sentiment and support of the closure, stating “My catch on the first opening day was 5.6kg [of lobster]. I don’t normally catch that much, but that happened because of this NTZ.”

Community-based approaches are key strategies for marine conservation and sustainable management, enabling resource users to assume responsibility for the management of marine resources.