(English) On Love and Amphibians: the Extraordinary Importance of the Malagasy Wilderness

Miala tsiny fa tsy mbola misy amin’ny teny malagasy ity lahatsoratra ity.

A new frog discovery in Madagascar’s South-East reminds us how resilient, but also how threatened, the Malagasy wilderness is.

A large frog has been discovered in Madagascar’s Domain de la Cascade Plantation Lansargues nature reserve, in the country’s South-East.

The three-inch amphibian, named Love’s Giant Stream Frog (after the herpetologist Bill Love, who has contributed greatly to the understanding of Malagasy amphibians), has been confirmed a previously unknown species following DNA analysis.

The frogs are nocturnal, and unusually large, and favour slow-moving, clear waters which they spend most of their time sitting in or next to, taking advantage of forest streams’ dense surrounding vegetation for camouflage.    

Although they have been observed in intact and moderately-degraded clear forest streams, suggesting a degree of resilience in varying environmental conditions, they have only been found in the Cascade Plantation region, which is renowned for biodiversity, but is also under significant ecological pressure.

While the discovery of Love’s Giant Stream Frog represents a significant advancement in herpetology, it also underscores the fragile state of Madagascar’s forest ecosystems, and points to the fact that the island’s protected and unprotected wilderness regions pay a vital role in safeguarding the unknown, as well as the catalogued, extraordinary Malagasy flora and fauna.

Researchers responding to the discovery’s announcement called immediately for continued conservation efforts to protect low-elevation rainforest streams from deforestation and habitat fragmentation.

And they did so with good reason.

Madagascar is home to five per cent of the world’s known species, and of those between 80 and 90 per cent are found only on the island.

But it has the world’s fourth-highest rate of deforestation. It has already lost 80 per cent of its natural areas and loses around 200,000ha. each year. At the current rate, its forests will be completely gone within 40 years.

And more than 3,900 Malagasy plant and animal species are threatened. The ‘level’ above ‘threatened’ is endangered: 600 species of flora and fauna are endangered. The ‘level’ above that is extinct.

The world relies upon Madagascar’s forest and wilderness areas. But even if it did not, these areas of extraordinary vibrance and beauty, and all the species within them, have a right to exist, at least as great as our own.

That’s why, even as we work to provide Malagasy communities with the platform to define then challenges which face them, and formulate and deliver the solutions to them, we also ensure they can lift themselves from poverty and hunger in ways which and/or as well as protecting and expanding the extraordinary Malagasy wilderness, and all it contains.

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