Madagascar Rescue: Fire Threatens Famous Men

AFVOANTANY, Madagascar— The flames are close. The wildfire lit up the night sky with orange smoke, moving like a lava flow along the hills, only a few miles away.

I watched the fire from the edge of a thick forest in central Madagascar, a few hours northwest of Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. It is a special place. This is one of the few remaining forests in central Madagascar — an area devastated by years of deforestation — and is home to rare animals, including many species of lizards.

This forest, which contains more than 400 species of trees, still exists thanks to its protection for decades. It is part of the nature park called “Reserve Speciale” Ambohitantely, which managed to reduce the illegal cutting of trees, making fat for agriculture, and other reasons that destroyed the surrounding forest and many forests throughout Madagascar.

But as I discovered that night, even the best environmental protections have their limits, especially as the earth warms.

Now, to protect nature reserves like this — and save some of the most amazing animals on Earth — a more proactive approach is needed.

If you happen to see a wild animal in Madagascar, it usually does not exist anywhere else in the world. Madagascar, a large island in eastern Africa, has been isolated from the rest of the world for millions of years, giving the animals here a long time to evolve into new species. That’s why about 90 percent of the country’s flora and fauna are unique, meaning they don’t exist anywhere else — including all the monkeys and nearly half of the world’s more than 200 species.

The “Special Reserve” Ambohitantely is a place where both of these are found in abundance.

On a cold night in September, at the end of winter in Madagascar, I was walking in the forest of Ambohitantely with Fandresena Rakotoarimalala, a doctoral researcher at the University of Antananarivo who studies the mangroves of the protected area. Males are notoriously good at hiding — what makes them special, of course, is their ability to blend in with their environment. But when they are exposed to the light of the lamp, they appear white, making them easy to see from a distance. That’s why we went at night.

We walked slowly through the forest, peering through the leaves with our flashlights and chasing away mosquitoes and bugs that gathered in the light. We heard the howling of monkeys overhead. At one point, we happened to see an antelope—a reptile with spines like a small sora—moving around in the forest.

Like many famous species of animals in Madagascar, the tanala is also endangered. There are about 100 species of mangroves on this island, and almost half of them are in danger of extinction, mainly due to the loss of their habitats, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, which is the world’s authority on endangered species and plants.

This is exactly what makes this night walk so special.

Every few meters, Rakotoarimalala — who has been called the Queen of the Tanala — stops and points to a white object stuck to a leaf. Most of them are young “Perinet” men, who are small in body and have emerald green skin. He also found several “à cornes-globes” horns, an endangered species, which have triangular heads. Their eyes may be looking at whatever they are looking at.

In just a few hours that night, we saw more than 60 males, from three different species. And this abundance is one of the reasons why the protection of Ambohitantely is important, says Rakotoarimalala, who studies the health of the men and their genetics in the protected area. The loss of this protected area would be a major blow to this entire group of animals.

The most common way to protect animals is to create protected areas, such as parks and protected areas, which often limit activities that damage the environment. In Madagascar and many other poor countries, these protected areas have not been very successful. People often have no choice but to depend on forests for their livelihood, whether or not these trees are legally protected.

Ambohitantely is not like that: the area is managed by a private organization called Madagascar National Parks (MNP), so they managed to reduce the cutting of trees in it, because the forest is far from crowded cities. The protected area is also smaller, making it easier to monitor.

But even so, the security of the area is not completely affected.

The biggest danger that Ambohitantely is facing today is human-caused wildfires. The people in the surrounding countryside burn land for many reasons, such as wanting the flowers for cattle, or because of customs. And all too often the fires spread out of control. From 1989 to 2017, around half of the Ambohitantely forest was lost, mainly due to wildfires. In 2022 alone, a third of the remaining forest will have burned, according to Jacquis Andonahary, a botanist at the local environmental protection organization called Association Vahatra, which works in the protected area.

Climate change, on the other hand, makes this disaster even more powerful.

The maximum daily temperature in Ambohitantely has increased by about 1 degree Celsius since 1980. And the increase in temperature dries out the vegetation, adding fuel to the wildfires. “The longer the dry season, the more things can burn,” said Steve Goodman, a researcher at the Field Museum of Natural History and vice president of Vahatra.

This problem does not only occur in Madagascar. Climate change is making vegetation more vulnerable to fire in many parts of the world, both within and outside of protected areas.

When the wildfire continues to destroy the precious residential area here in Ambohitantely, the scientists in Vahatra, the workers in the protected area, and the local residents are trying hard to rebuild it. Their method is simple: plant lots of trees.

For the past few years, Vahatra has been reviving areas of forest that have been burned by fire, as a way to preserve its flora and fauna. (When the forest is reduced in size, the species of animals and plants in it are gradually lost.)

However, it is difficult to guarantee that the planted trees will survive.

First, it is necessary to install a type of tree that is suitable for the soil conditions and its location. Andonahary researched in the forest to find out what trees grow there and what conditions they need (type of soil, light, etc.). Then, Vahatra and the villagers collected seeds, raised them in a nursery, and placed the seedlings on the edge of the remaining forest, adding fertilizer to improve it. “The survival rate of planted trees is over 90 percent,” Andonahary told me. This is a great achievement, as plantations often fail.

After the trees are planted, the researchers and the villagers try to protect them from burning.

The manager of the protected area gives a small amount of money to the people who live in the neighborhood to do patrols and look for signs of fire. They also have backpacks with water that they can use to put out fires.

More importantly, the Vahatra and the MNP established two equal lines around Ambohitantely, called aroafo — flat land without flammable grass, where fire should not be able to pass. It’s a simple solution that people, including indigenous tribes in the United States, Canada, and Australia, have used for centuries to control the spread of fire.

The fire I saw that night in September never reached Ambohitantely – because of these efforts. According to Ricky Tiavina Rakotonindrina, an employee of MNP who manages the protected area, the fire was put out by the firefighters working in MNP.

But of course, there will be another fire. Climate change is contributing to this. So the question now is: will these efforts be enough to protect the protected area — and all the treasures it contains, including those that may yet be discovered?