A Malagasy Community Wins Global Recognition For Saving Its Lake

A Malagasy Community Wins Global Recognition For Saving Its Lake

This article was written by Malavika Vyawahare and published on the 18 November 2020 in Mongabay. Malavika describes the work undertaken by a community association to improve the health of the ecosystem of a wetland.  The organization won the Equator Prize in the category “Nature for Water.”


Sapphire miners overrun newly-established park in Madagascar

Sapphire miners overrun newly-established park in Madagascar

By Andreea Campeanu / Agence France-Presse

Knee-deep in muddy water, a 10-year-old child and a woman with braided hair lean over a large sieve, washing earth and rocks, their eyes clenched against the filthy splashing water.

They are among the thousands of panners hoping to strike it rich on a recently discovered seam of sapphires, running through Madagascar’s newest national park created to protect the island’s famed lemurs and dozens of other rare species.

The 381,000 hectares (941,000 acres) of virgin rainforest of the Ankeniheny-Zahamena corridor officially became a protected area late last year. Then in April, sapphires were found.

“We had an invasion of illegal miners in this park, which is our most recent protected area”, says Angelo Francois Randriambeloson from the ministry of environment.

The park has 2,043 identified species of plants; 85 percent are found no where else in the world. There’s also 15 species of lemurs, 30 other mammals, 89 types of birds and 129 kinds of amphibians. And that’s just what’s been discovered so far.

But now among the park’s tall trees, a one-kilometre (half-mile) stretch of river valley has turned into a mudpit as thousands of Madagascar’s desperately poor people have thrown up makeshift homes of branches and plastic sheets, beaten by near-daily rains.

The vast Indian Ocean island is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 81 percent of the population living on less than $1.25 a day, according to the World Bank.

Sapphires present an irresistible lure of quick riches for the lucky, who say they don’t have to dig more than three metres (10 feet) to find large stones.

Madagascar is one of the world’s biggest sapphire producers, selling most to Sri Lanka and Thailand for cutting and polishing.

Reaching the mine takes two days of hard walking from the small town of Didy, the closest place reachable by bush taxi. Even getting to Didi is tough. It’s 300 kilometres from the capital, and less than a third of the distance is on paved roads.

The last 10 hours of the walk is through beautiful rain forest, climbing precipitous hills on barely perceptive boggy paths.

Morris, a 40-year-old aspiring miner, walked barefoot, carrying a heavy sack of rice so he would have food at the mine.

Most people spend just a few weeks here until they find one or more larger sapphires or rubies, some up to 10 grams.

“Here there are only two: blue sapphires and rubies. But there are more large ones,” said Dudu, a 35-year-old buyer.

But the government wants miners to leave the park.

“We are now forming a commission and we are trying to plan a way to send the people away from the mine,” said Randriambeloson. “As it’s a protected park, its soil also belongs to the Malagasy state.”

But people still go every day, in groups, to and from the mine. Some have nothing but the clothes they are wearing. Others carry bags of rice, noodles, powdered milk or even generators.

Water for washing is now hard to find, since the river is extremely dirty. There is no drinking water and not a lot of food. Informal eateries surrounded by mud and fallen branches are expensive.

“The place has changed, there are more people around. But there are no security problems, only sanitation ones,” Didy’s deputy mayor said.

The authorities in the capital Antananarivo sent in police to discourage people from mining, to little result so far.

“Once the miners are out, we will restore the damage done,” Randriambeloson vowed.

From Google News:

New assessment finds 91% of lemur species threatened with extinction

By Mongabay

94 of the world’s 103 lemur species are at risk of extinction according to a new assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released by the group’s Species Survival Commission during a workshop this week.

Lemurs, a group of primates that is endemic to the island of Madagascar, are threatened by habitat destruction and poaching for the bushmeat trade. The update to the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species shows that 23 lemurs are now classified as ‘Critically Endangered’, 52 are ‘Endangered, 19 are ‘Vulnerable’ and three are ‘Near Threatened’. Only three lemur species are listed as ‘Least Concern’. The new numbers are alarming relative to the last assessment — carried out in 2005 — which identified 10 species as ‘Critically Endangered’, 21 as ‘Endangered’, and 17 as ‘Vulnerable’.

“The results of our review workshop this week have been quite a shock as they show that Madagascar has, by far, the highest proportion of threatened species of any primate habitat region or any one country in the world,” said Christoph Schwitzer, the Head of Research at Bristol Zoo Gardens who serves on the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s Primate Specialist Group. “As a result, we now believe that lemurs are probably the most endangered of any group of vertebrates.”

“This new assessment highlights the very high extinction risk faced by Madagascar’s unique lemur fauna and it is indicative of the grave threats to Madagascar biodiversity as a whole, which is vital to supporting its people,” added Russ Mittermeier, President of Conservation International (CI) and Chair of IUCN/SSC’s Primate Specialist Group. “As the forests go, so do lemurs and a host of benefits derived from them.”

The plight of lemurs has significantly worsened since a 2009 military coup plunged the country into a political crisis which undermined its institutions, led to abandonment of conservation initiatives, undercut Madagascar’s emerging ecotourism industry, and contributed to a sharp rise in illegal logging and commercial lemur hunting. Andry Rajoelina, the politician who seized the presidency during the coup, remains in power.

Read more from Mongabay: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0713-lemurs-madagascar.html