Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Deforestation and hunting could wipe out Madagascar’s iconic lemurs within the next 25 years, officials at the conservation and primate research center GERP told BBC News on Thursday.
Speaking to the British news agency, GERP director Professor Jonah Ratsimbazafy said that “the situation getting worse as more forests disappear” every year, and that creatures are “in more and more trouble.” Thus far, 106 lemur species have been identified, and almost every one of them faces at least some threat of extinction, with many of them critically endangered.
Part of the problem, Ratsimbazafy explained, is that their habitats are forests that are unique to Madagascar, and there has been increasing pressure to clear those forests for additional farmland to help the growing population. The slash-and-burn deforestation practices (known as “tavi”) have had a devastating effect on the strepsirrhine primates, he added.
“Just as fish cannot survive without water, lemurs cannot survive without forest, but less than 10% of the original Madagascar forest is left,” said Ratsimbazafy, who also serves as a co-vice chair of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Madagascar primate section. “I would believe that within the next 25 years, if the speed of the deforestation is still the same, there would be no forest left, and that means no lemurs left in this island.”
Illegal poaching also a major threat for the creatures
Government officials told the news outlet that as much as 10 percent of Madagascar’s land has been set aside to some degree for wildlife, including the establishment of both protected areas and national parks. However, regulations are often not enforced at a local level, and this has lead to the clearing of forest land for farms to help combat poverty.
“We have a struggle. Sometimes there is engagement on paper but sometimes it’s not in reality because on the ground there is still deforestation,” Ratsimbazafy said, adding that the only long-term solution is to go to the communities and try and convince them that the forest and the lemurs living in those habitats are valuable and worth protecting.
In one protected area, GERP is hiring locals to help keep watch over the forest and serve as tour guides for visitors, emphasizing that the lemurs are more valuable alive than dead, according to BBC News. The group is also helping to introduce fish-farming, bee-keeping, and other ventures into local communities, as well as teaching new rice-growing techniques that do not require continued expansion into the creatures’ territories.
However, the creatures are also threatened by hunters on the lookout for bushmeat. Despite the fact that it’s illegal to kill lemurs, poachers are reportedly still shooting or setting traps for the creatures to either eat or sell their meat. While there are no reliable estimates of lemur losses, estimates in one particularly vulnerable area indicate that up to 10 percent of the population are being slaughtered every year.
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