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Mae’n ddrwg gen i, mae’r cofnod hwn dim ond ar gael mewn English.
Today (3 March 2025) is World Wildlife Day, a moment in which we celebrate the world’s wildlife and conservation work done to protect it and the ecosystems of which animals, plants and we are part, and upon which we all rely.
At Money for Madagascar, wildlife and the ecosystems of which it’s a vital part, are matters close to our heart, and indeed at the heart of our our work.
Madagascar is a country of remarkable and unique wildlife. Eighty percent of plant and animal species native to Madagascar are found nowhere else on Earth, and the country hosts five percent of all the world’s wildlife.
About 95 per cent of Madagascar’s reptiles and 92 per cent of its mammals (as well as 89 per cent of the flora on which they rely) exist nowhere else on Earth, and the rainforest as a whole is vital to the ongoing wellbeing of the planet.
But Madagascar is also a country where people face serious challenges. 79.9 per cent of Malagasy people live on less than £1.73 per day, the world’s poverty baseline.
Despite Madagascar being one of only four countries which absorbs more carbon than it emits, its people are also among those suffering the worst impacts of climate catastrophe most regularly, including drought, crop death and the permanent loss of fertile soil for growing food.
Yet, by an accident of birth, Malagasy people facing these challenges are also charged with protecting and promoting the rainforests which surround them, and the wildlife they host.
And the very uniqueness and rarity of those ecosystems mean those animals and plants are unusually vulnerable to threats posed directly and indirectly by human activity – from climate catastrophe and from their habitats being destroyed as people struggle to overcome shortage, feed their families and live in a reasonable level of comfort.
That’s where we come in.
We work with Malagasy people to enable them to improve their livelihoods and lives, while simultaneously expanding, restoring and protecting their environment and its wildlife.
From lemurs to turtles, trees to tenrecs, beautiful birds to exotic frogs, our work is helping wildlife thrive against a backdrop of potential and actual challenges.
One example is our Youth for Lemurs project.
Endangered Species International reports the “population of the lemur has fallen to between 2,000 and 2,500 animals in the wild, a highly disturbing 95% decrease in the last 17 years.” There are now fewer ring-tailed lemurs living in the wild than in zoos.
Youth for Lemurs works in three eastern Malagasy nature reserves to equip young people to protect and expand lemur populations, while also improving their and their communities’ lives and livelihoods.
We are helping them gain knowledge, skills and experience to increase yields through sustainable farming, adopt aromatic and medicinal plants in their farming systems and market their products with ethical enterprises. They work for – and are sharing their skills to engage others in – lemur conservation stewardship, all of which helps protect these remarkable and endangered animals.
Our ECCLiM project demonstrated that sustainable development, including wildlife protection, can build a better Malagasy future.
ECCLiM worked in the ‘Bank of (the river) Onilahy’, the ‘Lake Ihotry-Mangoky Delta Complex’, both in the South-West, and Tsinjoarivo, in Madagascar’s Highlands.
All three are Malagasy Key Biodiversity Areas, and host wildlife and plants under threat, many of which are unique to their region, including Onilahy’s spiny forest, in which 53 per cent of plant species and eight full genera are endemic, as are many lemurs, tortoises and birds.
The Lake Ihotry-Mangoky Delta Complex hosts a baobab forest and several endemic plant and wildlife species, particularly water birds, while the Tsinjaorivo area contains at least 11 species of primate, 17 species of tenrec (the highest diversity in Madagascar of a family unique to the island), seven species of rodent, five of them endemic, six carnivores, four of which are endemic, and at least 247 plant species.
Supported by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), we strengthened local community and civil society capacities to improve farming practices and incomes, and reduce exposure to climate change risks.
The project also supported forestry and environmental protection, and trained young leaders to deliver forest and agriculture-related support services, improving incomes and the environment for years to come. ECCLiM’s lesson is that Malagasy-led development and the environment can complement, rather than conflict with, one another.
Our Mitsinjo Forest project works to support local families to feed themselves and improve their standard of living without needing to resort to environmentally-destructive practices, while also protecting and restoring the unique rainforests of the Torotorofotsy Wetland.
The wetland, near the Andasibe Mantadia National Park, is home to critically endangered species such as the golden mantella frog, the greater bamboo lemur and the black and white ruffed lemur.
We work, in short, to enable Malagasy people to protect their environment and the unique, wonderful and astonishing wildlife it supports, while also improving their lives and livelihoods.
Because people deserve to live fulfilling lives, without shortage.
Because animals too deserve their place on the planet on which we are all born.
Because people, animals and plants alike are all a part of, and absolutely reliant for survival upon, our shared environment.
And because we are part of and shape, that environment, and have a responsibility and great reason, to protect it from harm.
At MfM we know, and with the Malagasy men, women and children we work with and for, prove every day that human development and comfort need not and must not conflict with the protection of the environment upon which we all rely.
It is a message we are delighted to share on World Wildlife Day.
(images from top: greater bamboo lemur; lowland striped tenrec; Madagascar clawless gecko; golden mantella frog)
