spotlight madagascar

Busy couple of weeks here in Ambositra – I’ve been slowly getting acclamated to my new house (4 rooms, hardly any furniture), doing yoga to keep warm in these temperatures which linger in the 40s, and diving into my new job, which is working as an ICT and Micro-Enterprise Educator at the Centre Mandrosoa d’Ambositra for Human Network International.

We had our official launch on July 23, which was a rainy extravaganza of speeches, ribbon-cutting, and a few soggy, chilly Peace Corps Volunteers. After all the official rigamarole, we convened upstairs in the Chamber of Commerce for food and drinks, and a good time was had by all.

From cold comfort outside to decadent mini-pizzas and delicate pastries:

Forest Conservation Update

Erik Patel in Marojejy sent me some delightful news yesterday:

Each year, the Seacology Prize is awarded to an indigenous islander for exceptional achievement in preserving the environment and culture of any of the world’s 100,000 islands. The Prize highlights the heroic efforts by people who seldom receive any publicity – indigenous leaders who risk their own lives and well-being to protect their island’s ecosystems and culture. Since the inception of the Prize in 1992, Seacology has given the award to 19 native islanders in recognition of their innovative and courageous work. The 2010 Seacology Prize winner is Rabary Desiré, a forest conservation leader from Matsobe-Sud, Commune Rurale Belaoka-Marovato, Madagascar. For his tireless efforts to further forest conservation in northeastern Madagascar, Mr. Desiré will be awarded $10,000 and honored at a ceremony at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, California on October 7, 2010.

This is an incredible honor, and a great achievement; congratulations to Rabary Desiré!

I’m going to start updating more – especially since my travel companion is coming out this month!!

Erik Patel, a friend of mine who works with the Silky Sifaka lemurs at Marojejy National Park in Madagascar, sent me these videos today. Illegal logging, its impacts within the protected area, great interviews with experts – take a gander.

Part 1:

Part 2:

I really don’t have time to be doing this right now, but I wanted to post about the looting of some of Madagascar’s most beautiful protected areas. The political crisis has turned environmental, as they tend to do:

Scramble to log Madagascar’s valuable rainforest trees in midst of crisis (Mongabay.com)

“Foreign traders have arrived in local towns seeking to take advantage of the political crisis that has weakened park protection and enforcement,” the source continued. “This is the worst, by far, that has happened to the park in recent years. The situation is worse than desperate.”

…

The crisis in Marojejy has serious implications on several fronts. First, of course, is the extremely detrimental impact it is having on the park’s unique flora and fauna. While old-growth rosewood trees may be the primary objective of the armed gangs, such destructive, unregulated use of the forest will certainly have an adverse effect on everything else in the park. Most worrisome is the well-being of the highly endangered Silky Sifaka, a lemur found only in the rainforests of Marojejy and the surrounding area.

But the crisis is also having a devastating effect outside the boundaries of the park itself. With armed militia descending on local villages and death threats being issued, people live in fear; communities are divided, and families are pitted one against the other. Many local people who depend on tourism – guides, porters, shopkeepers, hotel and restaurant personnel – now live in limbo. With no other means of support, some turn to the lucrative rosewood trade.