Madagascar biodiversity under threat as gangs run wild

Catherine Brahic, New Scientist 12 Oct 09;

Roasted lemurs and criminal gangs exporting precious hardwood: this is the sad state of affairs for Madagascar's legendary biodiversity. Since a military coup forced the president to resign in March, conservationists and biologists have watched as loggers have stripped the country's forests and killed its animals for bushmeat.

Much of the foreign aid to Madagascar has been withdrawn and, without a stable government to enforce rules and laws, criminal organisations have been quick to exploit the unique animal and plant life of the country.

"It has been a gold rush for logging gangs and bushmeat hunters to do as much as they can before the government gets organised and puts a stop to it," says Edward Louis, a conservation biologist at the Omaha Zoo, who has been working in Madagascar for a decade.

In August, Conservation International reported that 15 bushmeat traders, contracted by a restaurant, were arrested carrying hundreds of endangered lemurs, which had been killed and roasted. "This happened in one of the country's best managed parks," says Louis. "If it's happening there, I can't begin to imagine what is happening elsewhere."
Unique assemblage

Sometimes called the "8th Continent" because of its diversity of species, many of Madagascar's plant and animal species are unique to the island. The 100-odd species of lemur are not found anywhere else in the world, for example.

Data collected by the environmental campaign group Global Witness shows that, at the very least, 120 rosewood and ebony trees, worth an estimated $480,000, are being taken out of Masoala, Madagascar's largest national park, each day. At least thirteen illegal traders, known locally as the "rosewood Mafia", buy the wood and export it, mostly to China. Conservationists say the logging is destroying the island's national parks and having knock-on effects on the forest's animals.

"Something needs to be done rapidly or the whole country is going to lose everything in about a year," says Louis.

Part of the problem is that when the nation's former president, Marc Ravalomanana, was ousted the tourism trade collapsed, leaving parks and other conservation projects, as well as the locals, gasping for money. "I don't blame the people," says Louis. But the environmental situation is not helped by the fact that international donors have withdrawn their aid.

In addition, the interim government in place until next year's presidential elections has been sending mixed messages about logging. Having initially closed one of the main ports for rosewood export it issued an inter-ministerial order allowing the sale and export of 750 tonnes of wood.
Call for boycott

"This not only legalises, once again, illegal timber but encourages the collectors and traders to cut down even more trees," says Reiner Tegtmeyer of Global Witness.

Alarmed, 15 NGOs and scientists including WWF, Conservation International and the Wildlife Conservation Society have called on the government to reverse the order. "Madagascar has 47 species of rosewood and over 100 ebony species that occur nowhere else, and their exploitation is pushing some to the brink of extinction," they wrote in an open letter on 7 October.

"Thousands of rosewood and ebony logs, none of them legally exploited, are stored in Madagascar's east-coast ports. The most recent decree will allow their export and surely encourage a further wave of environmental pillaging."

The group is calling on consumers of precious woods to boycott those coming from Madagascar.