Saving Madagascar’s rainforests

MADAGASCAR’S Tsitongambarika Forest is one of the nation’s few remaining regions that supports significant areas of lowland rainforest. However, deforestation rates there have been among the highest in the country. But things are set to improve, says BirdLife International.

The main cause of deforestation is changes in cultivation by poor subsistence farmers who lack alternative land on which to grow food crops. Desperate to lay claim to land, they do so by clearing forest. Further threats come from logging hardwoods and hunting.

Since 2005, BirdLife Partner Asity Madagascar has been working with local people to help conserve the forest as part of BirdLife’s Forests of Hope programme. The project’s Senior Manager, Roger Safford, commented that local farmers are “too often portrayed as the villains of tropical deforestation,” adding that they “can be the best conservationists, so long as their needs are properly considered and they take part in and benefit from management”.

Asity Madagascar carried out a comprehensive social and environmental assessment of the forest, identifying the people most affected and how to meet their needs. The organisation then helped establish KOMFITA, an umbrella body of community groups which, together with Asity Madagascar, manage the forest.

In a further boost, in April 2015, the Madagascar government declared more than 200 square miles of the region would be protected. The new Tsitongambarika Protected Area is jointly managed by Asity Madagascar and local communities. These organisations are working on long-term conservation plans for the area. This specially protected region was the recipient of funds raised by this year’s Birdfair.

Results are already being seen, with birds such as Scaly and Short-legged Ground-rollers – once very rare and still highly prized by visiting birders – now regular. Red-tailed Newtonia was lost to science between 1930 and 1989 when it was rediscovered near Tsitongambarika; it’s now thought to be common there. Also once considered lost is the elusive Madagascar Red Owl which is increasingly seen at Tsitongambarika. All four species are listed as Vulnerable by BirdLife International and are endemic to Madagascar.

One of the project's success stories, Scaly Ground-roller is seen with increasing frequency in the forest. Photo by Pete Morris, courtesy of BirdLife International.