Primary school children participated in a 3-day environmental education event funded by The Rufford Foundation. Each child received a t-shirt, either green for the forest, orange for golden frogs or white for sifaka lemurs, and competition winners received additional prizes (books). © Madagasikara Voakajy.
Community meetings. Roma Randrianavelona holding a meeting with a community association in the Mangabe forest. © Madagasikara Voakajy
In 2010/11, The Rufford Foundation provided a grant of £10,000 to Madgasikara Voakajy.
Mangabe Forest: Consolidating Community Support
The Rufford Foundation has been supporting Madagasikara Voakajy since 2009. The project aims to empower communities to develop local institutions and incentives that benefit both livelihoods and biodiversity, leading to a new protected area at Mangabe.
Major achievements over the last year included the community association ‘Fitahiana’ passing its evaluation by the Ministry of Environment and Forests. Eight forest areas with breeding ponds of the Critically Endangered golden mantella frog were included in strict conservation zones and integrated into community management plans.
The project also facilitated the creation of a new community association ‘Tsaradia’ to take on forest conservation in the west of the forest. Significant progress was also made in raising the awareness of primary school children about the forest and its biodiversity highlights. A conservation education initiative was held in three schools for 76 children. Post-project evaluation has revealed that children have a better understanding of local biodiversity issues. The schools’ art competition that was part of the education initiative enabled greater community participation and generated wider awareness about the proposed protected area. We also assessed peoples’ attitudes towards the different lemurs.
These results were presented by Toki Hobinjatovo in the Cambridge Student Conference on Conservation and revealed that people were frightened of some lemurs, considered some as pests and had affection for indri. These results are now helping us to design future activities to reduce the illegal hunting of the lemurs. The support from The Rufford Foundation is an essential component of our efforts and is making a real difference to people and biodiversity in Mangabe.
