Tag archives for Madagascar
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By Taylor Mayol, Blue Ventures Look at a map and find Madagascar, the fourth biggest island on Earth, just off the coast of east Africa. Focus on the dry southwest and find the town of Toliara, capital of this impoverished region. Now imagine a drive northwards through the searing heat along a bumpy, sandy trail. You’re…
A Cure for Madagascar
Posted by Cara Brook of Princeton University - Andrew Dobson's Lab in Explorers Journal on June 7, 2013 
Representatives from the surrounding countryside gather together with scientists and doctors and public health administrators in Namanabe Hall to discuss threats to humans in the region. In addition to locusts, people talk of plague and dengue fever and chikungunya, of malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis, and intestinal worms. Madagascar is a rough place to live.
Land of Lemurs and Other Strange Things
Posted by Cara Brook of Princeton University - Andrew Dobson's Lab in Explorers Journal on June 2, 2013 
Young Explorer Cara Brook is in Madagascar studying the impact of human land development on biodiversity and how it could potentially spread infectious diseases that are transmitted from animals to people. Cara will focus on bubonic plague in small mammals and henipaviruses and lyssaviruses (two strains of viruses) in bats. ——— When I first came…
Return to the Eighth Continent
Posted by Cara Brook of Princeton University - Andrew Dobson's Lab in Explorers Journal on May 28, 2013 
Young Explorer Cara Brook is in Madagascar studying the impact of human land development on biodiversity and how it could potentially spread infectious diseases that are transmitted from animals to people…diseases like the bubonic plague.
Posted by According to local legends in Madagascar, the aye-aye lemur is a demon that can kill just by pointing a finger. That sounds mythical, but for insects inside tree trunks, there is truth to the killing part. The nocturnal aye-aye uses its multipurpose middle finger to tap forest wood in search of its meals (see above…
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Would you eat sand, chalk, coffee grounds, or chicken poop? Some people do, and it’s called pica—the craving and purposive consumption of non-food substances.
Cocoa Thieves Haunt Malagasy Farmers
Posted by Michael Fry on September 11, 2012 
Madagascar, perhaps better known as one of the world’s top producers of vanilla, also grows cocoa beans. For chocolate. High-end chocolate. And that’s putting unprotected Malagasy farmers at risk. Because as demand for their “dark gold” rises, so do prices. And so does the temptation for armed cocoa bandits to rob unprotected farmers of their…
Gibson penalized for illegal wood purchase
Posted by Michael Fry on August 9, 2012 
Madagascar’s hissing cockroaches might outlive its supply of tropical hardwood trees, but they’ll surely never be admired for their tonal qualities. Rosewood and ebony wood, on the other hand, are prized by luthiers and musicians. They’re also dangerously over-logged in Madagascar. Enter Gibson Guitar Corporation, whose stringed instruments, including the iconic Les Paul…
Help Needed for Survivors of Devastating Floods in Madagascar
Posted by Mireya Mayor, Ph.D. of National Geographic Explorer, Scientist, Correspondent on March 9, 2012 Dozens of people have died and tens of thousand are homeless in the wake of devastating floods that swept through the African island country of Madagascar during a recent cyclone. The disaster was aggravated by ongoing deforestation and environment degradation. Survivors need our help.
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Despite their best intentions to avoid such conflicts, environmentalists often end up squaring off against those who say protection measures deny them jobs or other resources. Perhaps nowhere is this debate more heated than when it comes to Africa, whether the issue is malaria vs. DDT or GMOs vs. the precautionary principle. Among the…
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Authorities in Madagascar this week arrested two men and seized close to 200 of some of the world’s rarest tortoises that they were trying to smuggle out of Antananarivo’s Ivato Airport to Jakarta, Indonesia, TRAFFIC, the wildlife monitoring network, said today.
Posted by David W. Krause is Distinguished Service Professor in Stony Brook University’s Department of Anatomical Sciences. For well over a decade he has led a groundbreaking field investigation of the fossils of the African island of Madagascar — a paleontologist’s paradise — due to the fossils’ state of preservation and the island’s role in the plate…
For 20 years, field scientists participating in Conservation International’s Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) have been exploring some of the world’s most abundant, mysterious and threatened tropical ecosystems; to date, they’ve discovered more than 1,300 species new to science.
Serious and continuing degradation of the Everglades aquatic ecosystem has caused the national park at the southern tip of Florida to be added to the List of World Heritage in Danger, the World Heritage Committee decided at a meeting in Brazil this week. Also moving on to the Danger List are the Atsinanana rain forests (Madgascar),…
Political and social chaos and a lack of international protections have put several species of rosewood trees in Madagascar in danger of becoming extinct from illegal logging, according to a policy forum paper in the latest issue of Science. “Forty-seven of Madagascar’s 48 species of rosewood (Dalbergia) are found nowhere else in the world,” said…
Alaotra grebe (Tachybaptus rufolavatus) is extinct, BirdLife International has announced in the 2010 IUCN Red List update for birds. “Restricted to a tiny area of east Madagascar, this species declined rapidly after carnivorous fish were introduced to the lakes in which it lived. This, along with the use of nylon gill-nets by fisherman which caught…
Erik Patel is a PhD candidate at Cornell University who has been studying the silky sifaka in Madagascar since 2001. Over the years he has become deeply familiar with Madagascar’s last remnants of wilderness and the people and animals who depend on them. So he was in a front-row seat when there was a resurgence…
Madagascar’s radiated tortoise–considered one of the most beautiful tortoise species–is rapidly nearing extinction due to rampant hunting for its meat and the illegal pet trade, a team of biologists from the Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) reported today. “The team predicts that unless drastic conservation measures take place, the species will…
A new population of rare giant mouse lemurs was discovered in southwestern Madagascar’s Ranobe forest, in an area threatened by mining concessions, WWF said today. “Last year during a night survey monitoring biodiversity along the gallery forest of Ranobe near Toliara…Charlie Gardner and Louise Jasper came across a giant mouse lemur (Mirza) foraging within fruiting…
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a Resolution today that condemns the unchecked illegal logging and decimation of Madagascar’s endemic species, Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon), author of the resolution, said in a statement published on his Web site. “The House is sending a firm signal that the devastating and illegal destruction of Madagascar’s natural resources…
Exploration 101: The dream jobs begin with a slog
Posted by Stuart Pimm on October 25, 2009 Conservation biologist Stuart Pimm has a long and brilliant career as a scientist. Author of numerous research papers and books, he has given lectures in distinguished forums across the world. Yet he is never happier than as a teacher and mentor. In this blog entry Pimm addresses what it takes to be a young explorer in…
The call to boycott Madagascar’s rosewood and ebony explained
Posted by Stuart Pimm on October 6, 2009 Representatives of Malagasy civil society, conservation and development organizations and the international community issued a statement today lamenting the ongoing destruction of Madagascar’s last fragments of forest for the illegal harvest and export of precious woods. Consumers of rosewood and ebony products are asked to check their origin, and boycott those made of Malagasy wood.…
A spectacular and extremely rare textile, woven from naturally golden-colored silk thread produced by more than one million spiders in Madagascar, went on display today in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. “This magnificent contemporary textile, measuring 11 feet by 4 feet, took four years to make using a painstaking technique developed…
Mangrove forests thrive in the salty tidal zone between ocean and land. They play an immensely important role in stabilizing the coastline against erosion, moderating storm surges, and as a nursery and sanctuary for hundreds of species of fish, birds, and other animals. It’s too bad then that in many parts of the world mangrove…
It’s Pronounced “FOO-sa”
Posted by Ford Cochran on July 13, 2009 My friends managing the My Wonderful World blog posted an interview today with ecologist, National Geographic Emerging Explorer, and all-around great guy Luke Dollar. He describes his decision to pursue a career in conservation science after finding a forest he wandered in as a child abruptly clear-cut, his work with Madagascar’s fossa (the island’s largest…
