DLC Conservation Update, November '24
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A note from Charlie Welch:
Happy holidays to all our Lemur Center supporters! As always, we are grateful for your contributions to the Center, and we are so excited to announce the new Charles Welch and Andrea Katz Fund, and to thank the founding donors who made the fund possible.
After 35+ years of having the privilege of working on behalf of DLC to help protect Madagascar’s stunning biodiversity, it is time for me to pass the baton. Although it brings me some sadness to announce my retirement, it is not without a certain satisfaction about what we have achieved in terms of conservation in Madagascar over the decades, but also to know that those conservation efforts will continue well into the future. There are so many to thank for helping us arrive at this point, but the bottom line is that without the kind generosity of you our supporters we would be unable to accomplish any level of our conservation goals. So a heartfelt thank you for making our work possible, both in the past and into the future!
Please consider including us in your year-end charitable giving plans! Thank you for your past and continued support of our work.
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In Madagascar, our teams continue to serve communities in the SAVA region with diverse programming aimed at improving environmental stewardship. Here are just a few updates on our activities from the last few months!
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We celebrated World Lemur Day with a festival attended by over 1,000 participants near the COMATSA protected area where we study and protect wild lemurs. We were honored to have the Minister of the Environment attend. A dozen partners contributed to a full day of activities about the environment and lemurs.
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Over 1,000 people attended World Lemur Day
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We created a new marionette skit featuring the aye-aye as a culturally sensitive approach to discussing superstitions about wildlife.
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A new aye-aye puppet to help dispel superstitions
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Education Specialist Evrard led lemur outreach lessons at Loky Manambato, home to the golden-crowned sifaka. With local educators in three schools around the protected area, Evrard delivered his lemur outreach lessons and co-hosted a celebration in a remote rural village, in collaboration with Foundation Time and Tide and Fanamby.
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Our SAVA Conservation team leading outreach
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Six schools enjoyed week-long summer camp visits at the New Generation School Garden. Over 130 students and teachers participated in 4-day campouts, learning about the environment, biodiversity, and sustainable agriculture. We also announced the Green School Initiative, a competition among the six schools to become the “Greenest” by the end of the year.
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Students gathered ripe fruits from around the garden as they learned about the value of the environment
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The DLC-SAVA Education team initiated two new youth professional development clubs with partner communities in Andasibe-Kobahina. One club focuses on masonry, and the other on sewing. They plan to put their new skills to good use with ideas for small start-up businesses and community aide projects. This is a community-guided project to address a root cause of deforestation because a lack of employment opportunities often leads young people to sell forest products like wood and charcoal.
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Clubs received training and equipment to start their projects
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Since 2019, our Agroecology team provided over 1,700 people with training opportunities in sustainable farming and incentives to help them get started. After more than 2,500 follow-up evaluations, at least 1,000 people reported the new methods they adopted are yielding better results in market vegetable farming, chicken husbandry, aquaculture, rice farming, agroforestry, and more. More than 50% of participants are women, and at least 100 participants taught others in their friend and family networks.
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Lead farmer Mdm Bemaniry proudly displays her home vegetable garden, providing nutritious food and supplemental income to her household
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Over 1,000 native forest trees were planted at the New Generation School Garden by the Sambava High School Environmental Club. The tree nursery is stocked with over 1,000 more seedlings ready to plant in the coming months.
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Tree nurseries in preparation for 2025!
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Forest restoration efforts are underway, with over 50,000 seedlings prepared in tree nurseries around the region. We identified more than 20 new sites with motivated stakeholders seeking partners to help them reach their ambitious goals of restoring more than 400 hectares (900 acres) to forest.
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School groups are key partners in restoration
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In our new bamboo charcoal project, we worked with local farmers to plant over 100 high-quality bamboo seedlings, which in just three years can be harvested to make charcoal. We identified hotspots where we can sustainably harvest bamboo to meet our charcoal demand. In addition, we’re creating value-added products from bamboo like handicrafts for sale.
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Our team arranging bamboo in our high-efficiency kiln
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With funding from General Mills, our team initiated six village savings and loans associations (VSLAs), a community-based way for rural people to save money and acquire loans to grow small businesses. After their first year, they settled loans and redistributed savings. While there was a steep learning curve, and some associations had difficulties regulating the loan repayments or interest charges, all were entirely satisfied with the association and will continue for a second year. Two new associations are being trained through a participatory system to facilitate peer-to-peer exchange.
Our Reproductive Health specialist, Lanto, teamed with more than 20 local health care workers to provide family planning services for over 3,000 women this year. Since January, 28 new communities are part of the network with more than 100 others that receive regular reproductive health services with the DLC-SAVA collaboration.
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Our team is exploring new areas throughout northern Madagascar where we are discovering potential opportunities to expand our impact. This includes the Loky Manambato protected area, Bobangira private reserve, and a sacred site known as Milanoabe, meaning “to truly believe.”
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The remaining forests around the Milanoabe mountains contain ancestral tombs, making them sacred
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We scouted sites throughout the north that are perfect for research, conservation, and ecotourism, including Amber Mountain, French Mountain, and Ankarana.
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The famous Ankarana Special Reserve is home to microendemic species
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| Partnerships and Synergies
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James Herrera participated in a new collaborative initiative, “Global Nutrition Cluster,” organized by Madagascar’s National Office of Nutrition. Other stakeholders include USAID, UNICEF, WHO, and local branches of health and public service ministries. The goal is to synergize activities to better serve malnourished communities in the region.
We met with other conservation organizations in the SAVA region, including World Wide Fund for Nature, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Missouri Botanical Garden. We are actively bringing together the relevant stakeholders in the region to unify our efforts for conserving endemic biodiversity and supporting livelihood development. For example, with Missouri Botanical Garden, among others, we are unifying our approaches to landscape restoration and synergizing our efforts across sites to help create more effective conservation.
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