MacArthur Foundation Grants Shelter Madagascar's Biodiversity

CHICAGO, Illinois, February 5, 2004 (ENS) - Conservation and sustainable development efforts in the isolated and biodiverse nation of Madagascar received a boost Wednesday in the form of four grants totaling $1.6 million from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation based in Chicago.

The good news comes just as the island nation is cleaning up after tropical cyclone Elita which hit Madagascar on January 28 with winds averaging 200 miles per hour.

Government officials who visited the affected areas in the western and southeastern parts of the country estimate that between 7,000 and 10,000 people had lost their homes. Schools and health facilities were damaged, and water, electricity and telecommunications were cut, but these services now are being restored.

An island in the Indian Ocean Africa's southeast coast, Madagascar is geographically isolated, and as a result has developed an extraordinary diversity of ecosystems. But the income level is low, so the infrastructure to protect the country's rich biodiversity is fragile or non-existent.

Jonathan Fanton, president of the MacArthur Foundation, said Madagascar is in "a class of its own in terms of the number of species on the island that exist nowhere else."

“But like other countries in the tropics that are home to much of the world’s greatest diversity of species," said Fanton, "Madagascar’s natural resources are at risk because of its extreme poverty."

Despite natural disasters and poverty, Madagascar is trying to protect its biodiversity, and that attitude has drawn the support of the MacArthur Foundation.

At the Vth IUCN World Parks Congress in South Africa last September, the President of Madagascar Marc Ravalomanana committed to increasing the total area protected from 1.7 million to six millon hectares over the next five years. Additions will include marine areas and wetlands and will bring the total area under protection to 10 percent by 2008.

Madagascar has more lemur species than any other country. Here an Indri lemur perches in a tree at the Perinet-Analamazoatra Reserve. (Photos © David Parks and Larry Barnes courtesy Missouri Botannical Garden)

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), based in Washington, DC, received the largest of the four MacArthur Foundation grants, $625,000, to help create a trust fund that will build the financial infrastructure needed to ensure there is funding available in the long-term to help protect Madagascar’s environment.

Funds for the Madagascar Foundation, which the Malagasy government expects will reach $50 million by 2008 and will be held in an endowment, will be used to finance national environmental management institutions.

The MacArthur Foundation's capital contribution is expected to attract investments from other sources, such as international agencies, governments, and other foundations.

WWF will use some of the grant funding to help the new foundation establish policies and procedures so it can effectively raise, manage, and invest its resources to produce the maximum conservation impact.

The next largest of the four grants, $500,000, was awarded to the American Museum of Natural History to help expand and enhance training opportunities for Malagasy conservation professionals through a “training of trainers” program. The newly trained conservationists will help manage the newly protected areas and train others as well.

Funds will be used to develop training sessions on key topics in biodiversity conservation, such as landscape ecology, threat assessment, applied demography, and natural resource accounting. The program will be designed for both conservation professionals and university instructors who are in a position to continue the trainings for future generations.

Clearing previously uncut rainforest along the Ambanizana River on Madagascar's Masoala Peninsula

A team of Malagasy field botanists will be created to identify the needs of and relocate at least 150 of the most poorly documented and critically endangered plant species from the Ibity Itremo mountain region on the east coast to areas that assure their protection.

A conservation assessment team of Malagasy specialists will be established to conduct studies in 10 areas that have been identified as priorities for plant conservation. Grant funding will also be used to offer Master’s level training for nine Malagasy students in applied plant conservation science and to set up a nonprofit botanical consulting service to provide expertise on a contract basis.

Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History received a grant of $225,000 to train a team of four Malagasy field biologists to provide leadership for conservation efforts in Madagascar. These scientists will provide a base of Malagasy scientific leadership able to conduct and interpret the results of rapid biological inventories in poorly or unknown forest areas on the island and to act as mentors for younger Malagasy students.

Conservation efforts will take place in the face of the frequent natural disasters that assail Madagascar. Drought in the south threatens some 130,000 people, and recurrent cyclones and annual flooding affect most other parts of the island.

According to the United Nations Development Programme's new Disaster Risk Index, an average of 58 people out of a population of 12 million die a year in Madagascar as a result of natural disasters.

The MacArthur Foundation has been providing support for conservation and sustainable development efforts in Madagascar for 10 years. With the goal of preserving high biodiversity landscapes, funding has been geared towards helping build the capacity of local groups to manage the biodiversity of their region and to train a new generation of conservation professionals and practitioners.

The Foundation provides support for efforts in nine ecological regions of the world - Madagascar, the Albertine Rift, and the Lower Guinean Forest in Africa; the Eastern Himalaya, the Lower Mekong, and Indo-Melanesia in Asia and the Pacific Rim; and the Northern Andes, Southern Andes, and Insular Caribbean in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The MacArthur Foundation also provides support for conservation work in the world’s most biologically rich yet threatened areas through its funding of the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, a joint initiative with Conservation International, the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility, and the government of Japan. It aims to advance conservation of the Earth’s most vulnerable ecosystems by providing support to nongovernmental, community and grassroots organizations.