Missouri meets Madagascar
Two resident botanists are stationed in the capital of Madagascar; they work with a talented staff of 70 local Malagasy botanists and botanists-in-training. The Garden has supported the expansion of the herbarium there, a multi-tiered botanical training program, and development of conservation initiatives and publications. Garden scientists are involved in the creation of forest preserves and are teaching sustainable agriculture techniques and resource use to local residents so they can survive without destroying the forest. Madagascar's flora is one of the world's richest, with tremendous numbers of species found nowhere else. Of its 10,000 to 12,000 plant species, 80% are endemic (including more than 1000 species of orchids). Nine plant families are found nowhere else in the world. |
Recently Madagascar’s transitional government issued two contradictory decrees: first, the exploitation of all precious woods was made illegal, but then a second allowed the export of hundreds of shipping containers packed with this illegally harvested wood.
Madagascar’s forests have long suffered from the abusive exploitation of precious woods, most particularly rosewoods and ebonies, but the country’s recent political problems have resulted in a dramatic increase in their exploitation. This activity now represents a serious threat to those who rely on the forest for goods and services and for the country’s rich, unique and highly threatened flora and fauna.
Precious woods are being extracted from forests by roving and sometimes violent gangs of lumbermen and sold to a few powerful businessmen for export. 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. Lumbermen are trapping endangered lemurs for food, and the forests themselves are being degraded as trees are felled, processed and dragged to adjacent rivers or roads for transport to the coast.
No forest that contains precious woods is safe, and the country’s most prestigious nature reserves and favoured tourist destinations, such as the Marojejy World Heritage Site, the Masoala National Park and the Mananara Biosphere Reserve, have been the focus of intensive exploitation. Currently thousands of rosewood and ebony logs, none of them legally exploited, are stored in Madagascar’s east coast ports Vohemar, Antalaha, and Toamasina. The most recent decree will allow their export and surely encourage a further wave of environmental pillaging.
Malagasy civil society, conservation and development organisations and the international community are united in lamenting the issue of the most recent decree, in fearing its consequences and in questioning its legitimacy. Consumers of rosewood and ebony products are asked to check its origin, and boycott those made of Malagasy wood.
Signed,
AZA Association of Zoos and Aquariums
CAS California Academy of Science
CI Conservation International
DWCT Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust
EAZA European Association of Zoos and Aquaria
ICTE Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments
MFG Madagascar Fauna Group
Missouri Botanical Garden
The Field Museum, Chicago
Dr Claire Kremen, University of California, Berkeley
Dean Keith Gilless, University of California, Berkeley
Robert Douglas Stone, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
WAZA World Association of Zoos and Aquariums
WCS Wildlife Conservation Society
WWF World Wide Fund for Nature
Zoo Zürich
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