Madagascar Lemurs in the 'REDD'

Dec 14, 2009 by watamelon    6 Comments    Posted under: Uncategorized

By Rachel Kramer
National Wildlife Federation

Last week, as global leaders joined together in Copenhagen to begin negotiations for a landmark agreement on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD), I took leave from the National Wildlife Federation to travel to a remote fragment of rainforest in northeastern Madagascar in search of a remarkable species of critically endangered lemur, and the team of local researchers who are striving to protect it and its forest habitat.

Hauntingly beautiful and one of the world’s 25 rarest primates, the elusive silky sifaka lemur Propithecus candidus is only found in a few remaining rainforest fragments on the island Madagascar, where forest loss for slash-and-burn agriculture threatens its survival and jeopardizes the ecological services local forest-bordering communities depend on.

After the period of political instability that resulted in a government coup earlier this year, Madagascar’s fragile natural resources have become more threatened than ever. Recent increases in the illegal logging of hardwoods from National Parks and Protected Areas to meet international demand for rosewood and ebony has been concentrated in the very forests that provide the last remaining habitat for the silky sifaka.

The current environmental situation in Madagascar highlights the great tragedy today that our world’s tropical forests are, in fact, ‘worth more dead than alive’.

Until international mechanisms are put into place that assign value to the ecological services tropical forests provide in regulating our global climate, deforestation rates will continue to increase. And our own future, and that of critically endangered species like the silky sifaka, will continue to be in the “REDD”.

Rachel Kramer is International Affairs intern at National Wildlife Federation in Washington, DC. As an environmental protection worker with the Peace Corps in Madagascar 2006-2009, she coordinated lemur surveys & community conservation and development projects in the island’s northeastern rainforest corridor.

Photo Credit: Rachel Kramer

Further Resources:

• New Global Witness- Environmental Investigation Agency Field Investigation into Illegal Logging
• Information on Silky Sifaka research and conservation
• More on Marojejy National Park, Madagascar
• Information on local conservation and development projects in the Marojejy region of Madagascar