Madagascar is great, but it also makes you very sad...

Seeing the area around Tana is very frustrating. Everywhere the mountains and hills are pretty "empty" and if you didn't know what it's supposed to look like you would probably not worry about it at all. The problem is that in all those "empty" places there should be forests. All forests are being cut and burnt down… either for firewood or to make space for rice paddocks. It is very sad to see that and think about how many lemurs used to live in the area and are extinct. Others still exist but are greatly reduced in number. If they keep going... and they will... there is only a few years left until there is no lemurs still alive in the wild. Back at uni we did some calculations with Vortex (a population dynamics software) for the Katta and it gave them about 20 years till extinction! And it doesn't look any better for the others either. If you keep an eye out you also see that there is not a single tree on which there is a branch at a height that you can reach from the ground. They cut them off for firewood. Very sad! The problem is that the people have no understanding for the destruction of the environment. They don't see what their behaviour is leading to, or if they do they don't see the bad side of it. I wish they would wake up and do something. One of the reasons why we pay "a lot" to guides and guards for our research is that we want the people to learn that conservation and National Parks is a good thing and brings money to them. I just don't have a lot of hope for the environment of Madagascar. If they keep going the only lemurs still alive will be in Zoos all around the world......... very very sad!

On the first photo you can see what the area used to look like...

... the second one shows the sad truth of many areas in Madagascar!