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Madagascar has been described as the laboratory of evolution, but it
is still one of the most unexplored areas in the world. Unlike its neighbours
Kenya and Zimbabwe, hardly anything is known about its natural history.
A major reason is political unrest. After 50 years of colonial rule under
the French, Madagascar gained independence in 1960. By 1970, a polarised
government and economic problems led to a series of uprisings, including
strikes, demonstrations and an attempted coup. As a result, Western scientists
were given only restricted entry.

In 1975, under new rule, it became the Democratic Republic of Madagascar,
and in 1980 it relaxed the rules governing entry into the country, ending
10 years of partial isolation. But only last August, 100 000 demonstrators
massed in the capital, Antananarivo, in an attempt to overthrow president
Didier Ratsiraka, who has ruled for 16 years. There was a general strike
and smaller-scale rallies still occur.

Resentment of foreign scientists, which had built up over a number of
years, came to a head in 1970. Addressing an international conference on
the island, Dr Rakotomaria, then director of scientific research, said:
‘We have touched on three problems – forest reserves, education, and the
role of foreign scientists. In all three spheres we have seen international
organisations negotiate with Frenchmen in the name of Madagascar but systematically
exclude the Malagasy from our own concerns . . . in the future, however,
you will find that negotiations must take place only with our government’s
representatives. ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵs will only be allowed to work here if they arrange
reciprocal benefits for Malagasy colleagues. The people in this room know
that Malagasy nature is a world heritage. We are not sure that others realise
it is our heritage,’ he added.

More than two decades later, the scientists are returning, to discover
a country that is rich in unrecorded species, many of them unique. Madagascar’s
ecosystems range from rainforest to semi-desert, but it faces deforestation
and siltation on a massive scale. Researchers no longer have to knock so
hard on the door to get in, but conditions are still far from perfect. In
October last year, a crocodile researcher and his son were ambushed by bandits
as they collected eggs. The father was hacked to death; his son is still
missing.

Fortunately, there has been more progress in furthering cooperation
between Malagasy scientists and researchers from the US, France and Britain.
Last July, a 100 000-acre site was set aside for protection, now called
the National Park of Ranomafana. The park was targeted for protection because
in 1986 Patricia Wright of the Duke University Primate Centre and German
zoologist Bernard Meier discovered the previously unknown golden bamboo
lemur there. Three bamboo-eating species are now known and all live in the
Ranomafana forest, bringing the number of lemur species in the forest to
11. The island now has four national parks, 11 strictly controlled nature
reserves and 23 special reserves. Together these areas, which are mostly
forests, protect 1.8 per cent of the total land. Wetlands, coasts and rocky
and sandy islands close to the coast are not legally protected.

With an area of almost 600 000 square kilometres, Madagascar is the
fourth largest island in the world, after Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo.
It broke away from mainland Africa at least 120 million years ago and now
lies like a giant left foot in the Indian Ocean, about 400 kilometres off
the coast of Mozambique. A plateau, up to 2876 metres high, runs north to
south, forming a long ridge. The western side of the island is mostly savannah
and plains, sloping to the Mozambique Channel. The northeast is covered
by rainforest, with cliffs jutting into the sea. Rain falls in the rainforest
up to 235 days a year. The southeast is semi-desert, sometimes called the
spiny desert because of its odd vegetation.

The island’s separation from Africa means that Madagascar’s plants and
animals have developed in isolation. Without the same competition as on
the mainland, a diversity of mostly indigenous species has developed. Estimates
of the number of plant species on the island vary from 7370 to 12 000, making
it one of the richest botanical areas in the world. Of 400 flowering plant
families found worldwide, 200 grow only in Madagascar.

Among animals, true lemurs are found nowhere else, and 95 per cent of
the country’s 235 known species of reptiles are indigenous. In the past
6 years, 12 new species of frog and 8 species of snakes have been found
by Chris Raxworthy, a freelance herpetologist working in the east coast
rainforest and Fort Dauphin, a coastal town in the southeastern province.
Raxworthy estimates that there are 450 frog species on the island, mostly
forest-dwelling tree frogs, compared with 8 species found in Britain.

Another reason why the flora and fauna are so well preserved is that
the island was populated relatively recently. Iron and pottery objects from
the 11th century suggest migration from Arabia or Pakistan, and in the 13th
century Indonesians are thought to have landed on the island. Polynesians
and continental Africans arrived later, and Chinese in this century during
French colonial rule.

But scientists are still not flooding in to Madagascar, even though
it seems ripe for research. Ben Freed, a PhD student in anthropology from
Washington University, St Louis, who is studying how two lemur species interact
in Madagascar’s Amber Mountain reserve, says: ‘There is so little research
that has been done here, and research that has been done is mostly initial
surveys.’ He suggests that one reason for the lack of research in northern
Madagascar is its remoteness. ‘There are no roads here and that has affected
the amount of work done. Who would come here when there are lemurs near
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Another problem, according to Freed, is that researchers do not spend
long enough in the field. ‘Long-term research is important, but for researchers
from the US to come over here for a long time a lot of money is needed.
It is hard for graduate students to get money. Most people doing research
in Madagascar are only here for two to three months at a time.’

But one scientist who has decided to spend the rest of his life on the
island is Don Reid, a British herpetologist. ‘Paradise has found me out,’
he says wryly. In the past four years, he has boosted the numbers of radiated
or plowshare tortoises (Geochelone yniphora) on the island using breeding
techniques learned in the Cotswold Wildlife Park in Britain.

‘When I came out here there were anything between 100 and 400 of the
tortoises left,’ he says. The Ministry of Water and Forests gave Reid 8
captive adult tortoises, 5 males and 3 females, to start his breeding programme.
There are now 31 of them – 15 per cent of the world’s population.

‘When I arrived nobody knew what they ate,’ says Reid. ‘I keep finding
new plants they feed on. Also, they had been kept in the east of the island,
which was wrong climatically. I decided to change the breeding site to where
the tortoises had come from. The problem is the tortoises are endemic and
live in one small area. If there was a natural disaster they would all be
wiped out.’

Other researchers are looking at saving habitats rather than single
species. Just as the presence of salmon in Scottish rivers can be used as
an indicator of a waterway’s health, butterflies signal the health of Madagascar’s
forests. Biologist Claire Kremen, who works for Xerces, a butterfly conservation
group in the US, has been studying Madagascar’s butterflies for three years,
using them to monitor forest recovery after it has been cleared for agriculture.
Like many of the island’s species, even basic information about the butterflies
is lacking. Kremen estimates that anything between 25 and 90 per cent of
them could be indigenous.

She counts and compares the number and type of one kind of forest butterfly,
the wood nymph, inside the rainforest and at its edge. The butterflies only
lay eggs on certain plants, and feed on others. In this way, she can assess
whether rainforest plants are re-establishing themselves.

Kremen says that French scientists working in the 1960s previously estimated
that it took 100 years for the forest to recover after being cleared for
arable farming by the traditional slash-and-burn method. But Kremen reckons
that the edges of the eastern rainforest can regenerate in as little as
50 years.

Even so, land shortage is forcing Malagasy farmers to clear land ever
closer to the rainforest and a rising population is increasing the pressure
to use it. Over the past 25 years the population has doubled, with 55 per
cent now under 20 years old. By the year 2000, with a growth rate of 2.8
per cent a year, as many as 16 600 000 Malagasy could be living on the island.

Since the early 1980s, a combination of inflation and drought has left
the people poor – the average yearly income is $200 per family. To survive,
people are relying more on the use of their one free resource, the forest.
Traditionally, land was farmed for three years and left fallow for seven.
‘Since human populations have risen, people are returning to the land sooner,
between three and five years. This does not give the land time to recover,’
says Kremen. Already, between 50 and 80 per cent of Madagascar’s forests
have been destroyed.

A lot of the scientific work now being done aims to reform local farming
so that it is less damaging to the land. The Amber Mountain project in northern
Madagascar is one example . The project encourages local farmers to consider
long-term management of their land instead of the destructive short-term
methods used now. For this to succeed, advisers on the project must convince
local people that this is the best way to protect their livelihood and boost
their income. The government’s Ministry of Waters and Forests is working
with the World Wide Fund for Nature in the area. According to John Hough,
a WWF technical adviser to the project, there has been no management since
the early 1960s.

With attention focused on such reforms, pure research has necessarily
taken a back seat, but interest continues to grow. One of the glories of
the island has always been its bird population. The world’s largest known
bird, the size of one and a half ostriches, used to live in Madagascar.
Called the elephant bird, it weighed 450 kilograms and its eggs had a volume
of 8 litres – the equivalent of 6 ostrich eggs or 144 chicken eggs. The
last recorded sighting was in 1666.

Today, there are 256 bird species on the island, including migrants.
Of those, 106 species are found only in Madagascar. Olivier Langrand, a
WWF technical adviser, says: ‘There is a low number of species compared
with other stations at the same latitude, but there is a high rate of endemic
species because it is so far from Africa and because it is an island. Their
evolution has been restricted to here.’

Driving around, you see almost no birds compared to somewhere like Kenya
because few live in open habitats. Most live in the rainforest on the eastern
side of the island. Langrand has been working in Madagascar since 1980.
‘In the last ten years in the forest, along roads I have seen a lot of change
as forest has been destroyed. The main threat to birds is loss of habitat.
Most birds are forest birds so if there is no forest they cannot live,’
he says.

Hunting is another problem affecting wood birds, mostly migratory birds.
Foreigners, mostly French, are allowed to hunt from 1 May to 1 October.
‘I am not against hunting if they know what they are hunting and are not
just shooting as many birds as possible for fun,’ says Langrand.

Richard Lewis, a British ornithologist, arrived in Madagascar in April
last year to find out why numbers of fish eagles are so low. There are only
50 pairs in the island. Working for the US Peregrine Fund, a centre for
the study and preservation of falcons and other birds of prey, his first
aim is to head to the west of the island. ‘We will study nesting sites to
see if we can get some idea of why there are so few fish eagles around.
In Africa, they are found all over the place, so why not here? Is it the
habitat? Are the birds hunted? Is there a lack of hunting sites? These are
the questions we need to find out over the next six months.’

He thinks fish eagles may have difficulty hunting because rivers are
so full of soil. The birds hunt by sight, and if rivers are clogged up they
cannot see the fish to catch them. The heavy siltation of the island’s rivers
with red soil – up to 6 milligrams per litre in parts of some rivers – has
already led some people to describe the island as ‘bleeding to death’.

The serpent eagle is another bird Lewis wants to find out more about,
as part of a full study of rainforest raptors. He says that in the past
50 years the bird has only been seen once: ‘We may come back after a year
and not see one.’ But Langrand says hope of finding the serpent eagle is
justified because sites where it was captured in the past are still intact.
During the study Lewis plans to see what kinds of forests are good for the
different kinds of raptors. Local Malagasy will be trained to study bird
biology, so it will eventually be a full Malagasy project. Lewis expects
it to last up to ten years. ‘We are talking long-term investment,’ he says.
‘Local Malagasy need to be involved, through education and training, on
a ground level, a rural level.’

He may start a captive breeding programme in Madagascar, similar to
one he established in Mauritius. ‘Breeding fish eagles would be useful for
reintroduction,’ he says. From his work in Mauritius Lewis showed numbers
of wild birds could be boosted with the help of humans. In 1979 there were
5 pairs of the Mauritius kestrel; today there are 25 pairs.

‘Many eagles suffer from infanticide. The biggest chick in the nest
kills smaller ones. That only happens in the first week, so if we take the
small chick away and put it back in the nest later on there is no problem
and all the chicks can survive. We are able to increase productivity of
wild eagles by doing that,’ says Lewis.

Langrand published a field guide, Birds of Madagascar, in May last year,
which he says is the first step in the study of Madagascar’s bird life.
‘I hope it encourages more people to come here and study endangered species,’
he says.

Madagascan-born Georges Randriansolo, who died in 1989, spent much of
his life working with birds, identifying them and studying their behaviour.
Over the past four years, several international organisations have been
putting more money aside for bird research on the island and Malagasy now
get grants to study birds.

‘Things are changing,’ says Langrand. ‘At the University of Antananarivo,
four Malagasy students are studying for higher degrees related to bird research.’
Many other researchers in Madagascar and elsewhere are hoping that this
is a sign of even better things to come.

Mary Cole is a freelance writer working in Zimbabwe.

* * *

The Amber Mountain project

The Amber Mountain project has three aims: to give local people a vested
interest in preserving the forest by boosting their income; to stop them
destroying rainforest and to encourage them to plant maize and trees such
as fast-growing eucalyptus and indigenous species outside the rainforest
area; and to promote tourism by marking trails, opening camp sites and developing
visitor facilities.

Rural people use dead wood found locally for cooking and heat. Urban
demand for charcoal, which is the main fuel, is at the heart of the problem,
and large numbers of trees are being cut down by the rural Malagasy to
supply towns with charcoal. In a bid to control charcoal production, the
government has now made it illegal to cut down trees without a permit. But
charcoal and traditional wood-burning stoves are cheap and readily available,
while alternatives such as bottled gas, paraffin and electricity are expensive.

The government’s main aim is to grow trees which can be used as construction
poles for houses, fences and furniture so local people can sell wood. There
is commercial wood production on a small scale on the island. Planting fruit
and nut trees for food and cash crops is also encouraged, though the trees
take up to five years to mature. ‘There is already a scheme to grow harvestable
trees,’ says John Hough, a technical adviser for the World Wide Fund for
Nature. ‘Some are planted each year and the WWF gives seedlings free and
helps people find land.’ To do this, 17 field staff are working in villages
to give technical advice.

While more trees are being planted, farming is also being intensified
so that less soil is left bare and washed away. Rice, the main crop on the
island and the staple food of the Malagasy, takes up 85 per cent of the
irrigated land area. The 1978-2000 plan drawn up by the government provides
for 500 grams of rice per person per day by the end of the century. Given
the rate of population growth, however, this means nearly three million
tonnes per year; the country, once an exporter of rice, is already having
to import it.

To intensify production, more irrigation is needed. The problem is that
irrigation schemes are largely privately owned and cannot be supplied to
everyone. The government is now encouraging farmers to grow alternatives,
such as maize and dry-land rice strains, which need less water. ‘We have
got to improve land, but it is still at an experimental level,’ says Hough.
‘Madagascar has got to move towards more agroforestry to improve the soil,
putting shrubs in fallow areas and mixing fallow and productive areas. Then
there will be a permanent system so no land will have to be left fallow.’

One plan is to use a nitrogen-fixing, fast-growing shrub, Greviriia.
After crops have been taken out the shrub is left to grow, improving the
soil so fallow periods can be shortened.