Living Madagascar | Alison Richard
The Sloth Lemur’s Song follows Madagascar over the past 250 million years. During its long journey to the present, Madagascar became an island and major changes took place in its location, relief, climates, vegetation and wildlife. The arrival of people around 10,000 years ago brought further, rapid changes that today threaten the survival of the island’s unique biodiversity.
In 1974, leaders of a small community in the southwest joined with conservationists from Madagascar and overseas to launch a community-based partnership. What has it taken to make this partnership work? Drawing on almost five decades of experience, I focus on three questions: how have constituencies with very different interests come together in a broadly shared endeavor? How have the small scale and limited impact inherent in community-based conservation been transcended? What does “success” look like, and how and over what time-frame should it be measured?
Professor Dame Alison Richard, primatologist, lifelong conservationist and former vice-chancellor of Cambridge, is the Crosby professor emerita of the human environment at Yale University. An eminent researcher, she has studied the ecology and social behaviour of wild primates in Central America, West Africa, and the Himalayan foothills, but she is best known for her work on lemurs in the forests of southern Madagascar. For over thirty years, she has worked to help conserve Madagascar's unique natural heritage and enhance socio-economic opportunities for people living in and around the forest. She is involved with several professional bodies, including the Board of WWF. In 2005 she was appointed Officier de l'Ordre National in Madagascar.
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