MADAGASCAR'S
BIODIVERSITY 
NATIONAL PARKS
The environmental movement in Madagascar began in earnest
in 1985, with an international conference of scientists,
funding organizations, and Malagasy government officials.
Biologists knew Madagascar was as an oasis of amazing
creatures and plants, but devastation and the burning
of Malagasy forests were threatening these treasures.
Concerned International donors and the Malagasy government
joined together to plan a major conservation program.
By 1989 Madagascar had the world’s first country-wide
Environmental Action Plan, which offered a blueprint
for biodiversity action for the next 20 years. The first
order of the day was to create a national park system,
called the Association Nationale pour la Gestion des
Aires Protégées (ANGAP, National Association
for the management of Protected Areas), and then set
ANGAP to work on creating new parks and training new
staff.
Much change has occurred – in 1985 there were
two national parks in Madagascar and today there are over
14. During the first five years of the Environment Action
Plan, five sites were chosen as integrated conservation
and development projects. The national parks were officially
mapped and registered, and teams were trained to work
in them. Meanwhile the people living in and around each
park were courted with alternatives to forest destruction,
such as bee-keeping, fish farming, and tree farming.
In the late 1990s focus shifted from national parks
to a more regional approach. This broader view started
biological, botanical, and anthropological surveys in
vast stretches of wilderness connecting the parks, especially
concentrating on the southern forest corridor between
Ranomafana and dÁndringitra and the northern
forest corridor connecting Mantadia with Zahamena. This
included mapping with Geographic Information Systems
(GIS) and setting up ecological monitoring.
In 2003, at the World’s Park Conference, President
Ravalomanana announced a bold plan to expand protected
areas by three times. Currently only 10% of Madagascar
is covered with natural vegetation and 3% of the country
is protected in national parks, classified forests or
natural reserves.
This initiative to triple protected areas is echoed
by a move to recognize more UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Currently Parc National de Tsingy de Bemaraha is Madagascar’s
only World Heritage site, and in 2003, the government
began a plan to nominate a cluster of eastern rain forests
as another World Heritage site.
Reproduced with permission from the Lonely Planet website www.lonelyplanet.com © 2005 Lonely Planet
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